[mythtvnz] silent cards

[Mark Cranness]

Nick Rout wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Criggie <criggie at criggie.dyndns.org> wrote:
>> I know everyone seems to prefer NVidia for front ends, but I see this ATI
>> card is pretty well specced, and the price is about $125++
>>
>> ATI Radeon HD4550 512MB DDR3 PCI-E, HDMI, DVI, VGA
>> no fan with Low Profile bracket
>>
>> http://www.dove.co.nz/jump/5170
>
> strange, they advertise it as HDMI but there is no HDMI socket on it.
> On recent experience I am very wary of the pics on web sites!
>
> I know you can do DVI-HDMI via a simple cable, but surely the pic is
> wrong on this one.

I have an HD4850 (in a Windows/non-HTPC system) which I believe to have similar features to the 4550 HDMI-wise, namely:
HDMI is via a DVI-to-HDMI dongle.
The card also sends 7.1 audio thru the DVI to the HDMI dongle so that audio is included (requires selection of an ATI specific
audio driver and probably the ATI supplied dongle).
(I haven't tried this yet, but googling convinced me it will be OK. The driver required for audio pass-thru is, I guess, another
reason why it might not be good for MythTV.)

>>
>> A review (pics are different)
>> http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/ati-radeon-hd4550_16.html#sect0
>>

The Xbitlabs pics are of the ATI reference design card, whereas the Dove pics are of a Sapphire designed card (a different PCB
layout).

Mark