Drivers for linux are rubbish

[pingufunkybeat]

If your distribution can't install drivers easily and cannot work without those drivers, then your distribution is broken.

[mugginz]

That actually does make sense, IsawSparks, you're contradicting yourself. How does mixing sound in software not do the same?

You're comparing 40 Mb/s for video to in the vacinity of about half a megabit/sec for audio. There seems to be a huge difference in scale there. So much so as to make the comparison a little on the irrelevant side.

The point is we have dedicated hw for both cases, doing sw is not ideal for either.

No, not all audio hardware has sufficient audio mixing or there'd be no reason to do it in software. I might add the wasn't the reason video decode was brought up was that it was more difficult to access hardware video decode via fglrx vs nVidia?

[curaga]

Not all graphic cards have sufficient video decoding either.

If I had to guess, the most popular graphics card would be Intel 945. Which has mpeg2-mc, and nothing more.

[mugginz]

Not all graphic cards have sufficient video decoding either.

That's right. And when they don't, the system must decode via CPU. Given the relatively large weight that video decode can place on a CPU it makes sense to use purpose oriented hardware to do this when it's present.

If I had to guess, the most popular graphics card would be Intel 945. Which has mpeg2-mc, and nothing more.

Which would mean CPU decode for h.264 on those systems which are equipped with an Intel 945. Lucky the Linux desktop as a platform is maturing to the point that we now have features like the more mainstream platforms such as assisted video decode were the hardware provides for it.

[barkas]

emerge ati-drivers
emerge nvidia-drivers

exactly the same for both. Oh wait, you are using crap as a distribution? Well...

Actually, same here, but I can't do that since my X-Server and Kernel is too new.

[barkas]

It's just fine in the sense that you can watch the content just fine.

Of course that a native hardware support is better and preferable.

But for many people, it's not a good reason to abandon an open platform for a closed one.

You yourself are arguing that it's perfectly OK to do software sound mixing and other things on the CPUs because CPUs are so powerful today, but don't accept that doing HD decoding on CPUs is not a huge deal when the CPUs are so powerful today.

The point is that while you can watch HD video purely in software, some things just can't be done on a cpu - mainly advanced deinterlacing, really nice scaling and generally postprocessing. We may still get there via shaders in linux, though - don't need UVD for that.

[pingufunkybeat]

some things just can't be done on a cpu

Everything that a codec does can be done on a CPU.

The only question is how fast and efficient this would be.

[IsawSparks]

There's no question left. It's answered already. It's neither fast, nor efficient, especially at fullrate with proper post processing, frameblending and other full quality playback features enabled.

All CPU driven HD decoders sacrifice quality for speed.

[bridgman]

The point is that while you can watch HD video purely in software, some things just can't be done on a cpu - mainly advanced deinterlacing, really nice scaling and generally postprocessing. We may still get there via shaders in linux, though - don't need UVD for that.

Those are largely done in shaders today, even on a proprietary driver when UVD is enabled. This is the point I am trying to make - that the quality differences you see today between CPU and GPU decoding are primarily a function of the amount of work done on shaders, not the work done on a dedicated decode block.

I don't think anyone has seen the kind of CPU/shader hybrid driver that is being proposed for the open source stack yet.

[droidhacker]

Actually, several Blu-Ray releases were done using MPEG2. And really, having the ability to put the load on your hardware really isn't a bad thing, especially on systems with little CPU resources.

Sure, its not -required-, but does it really hurt to put the load on the GPU? You're probably measuring only CPU usage, rather than CPU and bus usage. Low power systems still struggle to push HD resolutions, no matter what the codec. By having the GPU do the work, you're sending the encoded stream, not a decoded raw stream to the GPU. Overall, beneficial to performance.

Oh, I wonder why these mobile chipset makers are putting GPUs and DSPs designed for video decoding in them.

Personally I think all video decoding, regardless of codec should go on the GPU. What else do I pay it for?

I don't say it HURTS, I'm saying that you need to focus on what you NEED. NEEDS and WANTS don't necessarily correlate. And FYI: there is software/shader/G3D accel for MPEG2.