On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 10:11:36AM -0600, Troy.A Johnson wrote: > TCLUGers, > > I have a box that I use because I am > too cheap to buy a DVD player. While > that may change in the future, for now > I get hours of enjoyment tinkering with > it, but those hours do not come from a > neverending supply, so I ask these > questions. > > Is there a Linux distribution that is better > suited/comes with DVD playback stuff, > or is there an app that will do it for any > disto? > > The box is: > K6-2 450 > 384MB SDRAM > 4GB HDD > 16X DVDROM > Voodoo3 3000 w/video out > > Is this box too weak for this task? Yes. (I have a similar machine with K6-III/500 MHz). > If so, where is the weakest point, in your > opinion? CPU and/or video drivers. The same machine plays DVD's just fine in windows with any ATI board and ATI DVD player (ATI boards have hardware accelerated mpeg decoding - too bad they don't make that available on Linux), but for pure software decoding, you need a 700 MHz class machine. Or a supported hardware decoding (that is an additional pci board that you route your video signal thru and it replaces a big blue rectangle on the screen with the movie - unfortunately, it alters the overall image quality : the ATI decoder has much better contrast and colors than the Creative DXR3 card I have). > It may be just too weak because it > does work under w98se and w2kp, > but video is choppy (moreso under > w2kp). > > Any advice for easy DVD playback > (so my wife can use it too) would be > appreciated. Upgrade mobo/cpu. I just paid $160 at newegg.com for a Duron 1.2 GHz / ECS K7S5A (it works with PC100 RAM). florin -- "If it's not broken, let's fix it till it is." 41A9 2BDE 8E11 F1C5 87A6 03EE 34B3 E075 3B90 DFE4 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 232 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20020204/73b539ac/attachment.pgp