CyberLink Launches MPEG-2 Software Encoder Plug-in for MCE

frenzz · **19th August 2005, 09:54 AM**

Interesting...

http://www.gocyberlink.com/eng/press...iew.jsp?id=886

CyberLink Corp., a leading developer in providing integrated solutions for the Digital Home, announced today the development of an MPEG-2 software encoder plug-in for the Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (MCE) and its upcoming Update Rollup 2 version. This plug-in drastically reduces costs for tuner card manufacturers by avoiding reliance on hardware chipsets when recording TV content with MPEG-2 video and audio quality.

So - a new encoder on the blocks... interested to see this one.

frenzz.

darkmenace · **19th August 2005, 01:25 PM**

I presume this will have no benefit in terms of automated conversion of DVR-MS to mpeg2

D

imelda · **19th August 2005, 01:30 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by frenzz

Interesting...

http://www.gocyberlink.com/eng/press...iew.jsp?id=886

CyberLink Corp., a leading developer in providing integrated solutions for the Digital Home, announced today the development of an MPEG-2 software encoder plug-in for the Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (MCE) and its upcoming Update Rollup 2 version. This plug-in drastically reduces costs for tuner card manufacturers by avoiding reliance on hardware chipsets when recording TV content with MPEG-2 video and audio quality.

So - a new encoder on the blocks... interested to see this one.

frenzz.

I think I would still prefer to use dedicated MPEG2 encoders on analog capture boards rather than pushing it to the CPU, they run cooler, and extra tuners don't stress the CPU. I don't know if I would like to have a dual core CPU hammering away with the encoding for a couple of tuners, while trying to watch something else.

When I first started reading this I thought it was an alternative to the Sonic encoder for burning DVDs and I would warmly welcome that, the Sonic one chokes a bit too easily on some formats, but I see this as a bit of sideways step or backwards step... moving away from software encoding was a big recommendation with MCE 2005.

i.

imelda · **19th August 2005, 01:37 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by darkmenace

I presume this will have no benefit in terms of automated conversion of DVR-MS to mpeg2

D

Correct, this is just a way for tuner card manufacturers to make dirt cheap tuners that rely on your CPU for everything. Maybe it's a harsh call, but think "Winmodem".

i.

beneuto · **21st August 2005, 05:00 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by imelda

Correct, this is just a way for tuner card manufacturers to make dirt cheap tuners that rely on your CPU for everything. Maybe it's a harsh call, but think "Winmodem".

i.

I had exactly the same thought but Winmodems were never really as big a problem as people made them out to be. Let's face it, who doesn't have a Winmodem these days - and onboard Audio is getting pretty popular these days too.

But on-board video is still questionable on anything but a pure Office machine since video processing is probably the most intensive application most PCs will do these days - whether it be 3D rendering or video encoding/decoding.

I dont see that there is enough headroom in any reasonable configuration today to cope with offloading MPEG2 encoding onto the CPU comfortably and I think we can expect a period of people being disappointed with the performance of their media centres until CPU power catches up.

darkmenace · **3rd September 2005, 11:44 PM**

I agree theres really no reason or place for this sort of thing. Hardware Mpeg-2 encoding is the only way to go IMO.Darky

simbot82 · **4th September 2005, 12:25 AM**

Yeah I would rather my cards did the work

imelda · **17th September 2005, 08:45 PM**

I just finished playing around with the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1100, which includes a software MPEG2 encoder instead of a hardware encoder (as well as DVB-T), and can report the following results against the sibling 1300 which has a hardware encoder...

CPU usage with the 1100 hovered around the 35-40% mark, and with the 1300 hovered around the 10-15% mark. So roughly a 20-25% CPU hit, and this was on a P4 .3.7 EE with HT enabled, so it would be even worse on a low end system. I should have grabbed two of the cards to see how the software encoder coped with recording two channels at once, but I don't think it would have been pretty. When I get a chance I will try it out on some single and dual core CPUs to see what CPU usage is like.

This confirmed my thoughts, if you need to use analog cards, spend a little extra on a card with hardware encoding, the overall responsiveness of your system will be much better, and you should have less CPU heat as well.

i.