I am interested in VIA boards because the Unichrome chipset supports MPEG2 hardware acceleration. That being said, I am wondering: to what degree will the MPEG2 decoder be useful with .avi files. I did google .avi & compression, however, I thought it would be best to ask those with experience.

Others have gotten the Unichrome set to play HD with a relatively low power CPU. That being said I am trying to understand the limitations of VIA \ Unichrome systems. Any insight \ guidance is appreciated.

I am really hoping that the new AMD Sempron 2100+ (9 Watts) will be paired with an MPEG2 decoder.

_________________
R7.3: 0.22.20091023-1, Hauppauge PVR-500 (Philips FQ1236A MK4), Gigabyte Gigabyte EG45M-UD2H, E5200 2.4Ghz, 2GB RAM, NVIDIA GEFORCE 256MB

I don't think a Sempron 2100+ would have any issue playing back most AVIs.

Agreed, the majority of today's CPU are capable of handling .avi. An old 450 MHz Inspiron plays the majority of the .avi files. I should have posed the question more in terms of HD player capability.

_________________
R7.3: 0.22.20091023-1, Hauppauge PVR-500 (Philips FQ1236A MK4), Gigabyte Gigabyte EG45M-UD2H, E5200 2.4Ghz, 2GB RAM, NVIDIA GEFORCE 256MB

I think that, by definition, the hardware MPEG2 decoder will only be useful for MPEG2 files and not AVIs. From what I'm finding via Google, you just won't find MPEG2 inside of an AVI container.

If you're making the recordings yourself over the air, the files will be MPEG2 files in an MPG container. As long as the Unichrome chipset can handle HD-sized MPEG2 files you should be fine.