What is mpeg2?

I have a Giga Pocket MPEG2 Realtime Encoder/Decoder card attached to a PCI in my pc. What does it do?

• What is the purpose of this device? If I remove it, will it affect anything?

• Answer:

  The decoder part speeds up dvd playback if used properly. The realtime encoder though sounds cool. Best thing to do is go to the manufacturer's site to see if you want it or not. For decoding these days cpu's and gpu's do that on the fly these days. It's been a long time since we have needed a hardware dvd decoder board. But if you are into making dvd's it might be useful I guess. Google is your friend, and maybe ebay if you don't want it.