Im struggling with the VIA drivers and overall performance of a Jetway Mini-ITX system board, which has this chipet and a VIA Eden C7 processor.

The chipset supposedly has the ability to decode MPEG2 and MP4/H.264 video, but currently it cant even display the overlay...

 

No updates on the motherboard makers support page?

 

Unfortunately, Jetways's support page looks like every other Taiwanese manufacturers page looked in 1998!

Ive always viewed VIA 4in1 type drivers with suspicion, but this is the worst Ive come across in years. To the best of my knowledge I have the latest everything, as all drivers have been downloaded (no disc).


Simon

 

Download Serviio, and a good codec pack,

that should sort things


Mart

 

Whats vexing me and what I hadnt considered before was how MPEG2 or MPEG4/H,264 can actually be decoded in the chipset.

Surely all codec packs are going to struggle as if theyre relying on processing power: I only have a single core 1.2GHz tiddler available.

 

Not necessarily. If the chipset is claimed to have hardware decoding, that would/should mean there's dedicated circuitry built-in which avoids the need for at least some of the processing that would normally be done by the main CPU. A good analogy would be something like an old RealMagic DXR3 DVD decoder card, which would allow you to watch a DVD at a fair old resolution even on a pitifully feeble PC (100Mhz CPU, 8MB RAM video card, etc).

Of course, to fully leverage that circuitry you absolutely need the correct drivers installed and loaded, and sometimes more importantly, for the manufacturer to have written good enough drivers to go with the hardware in the first place.

 

I have an SB DXR3 Mark and the original Sigma Hollywood+. The difference is that they use a dedicated driver and application.

The drivers have all been downloaded from Jetways page for this particular board, but they seem to be generic at best. Id have been better off with a VIA board...

 

If it was just down to Sigma's software, the same cards wouldn't be able to play back a DVD at full screen res on a 400 Mhz Linux PC, using generic mplayer and with just 1% CPU utlization, yet mine used to manage it perfectly well. It's all about the drivers, and how much hardware offloading the chipset is really designed to do.

Anyhow, fished you out a link for another board that uses the same chipset, you might have better luck with the drivers on their site:
http://www.commell.com.tw/Support/Pr...ort/LE-365.htm

 

Youve misunderstood me: the output is due to the adapter card yes, but it isnt seamless - you fire up the app which relies on the driver and the app reads from the optical drive.

The 'hardware' MPEG processing in the CX700M northbridge is supposed to be seamless without the need for an application to control it - its supposed to happen when any MPEG compressed file is being accessed.

Its a shame that that Sigma stopped developing the cards...

Thanks for the link.


Simon