Looking Forward To UVD On Linux?

After slides had leaked out onto the Internet last month that AMD is going to support playing high-definition multimedia content on Linux, we had talked a bit more about UVD for Linux. There are two shared libraries already shipping with the AMD Catalyst Linux Suite, libAMDXvBA.so.1.o and libXvBAW.so.1.o, that reference XvMC and UVD2 (Unified Video Decoder 2) but they aren't yet being utilized by the proprietary driver. If those slides are to be believed, however, the official high-definition video support (such as Blu-Ray) will arrive this month in Catalyst 8.10.

Though there are still many questions that remain about this AMDXvBA interface for accelerating HD video content. How open will it be? Will it become an open standard that other X.Org video drivers can eventually adopt? Which video applications will support this interface? Will the original UVD-supported GPUs work or just the newer RV770 UVD2 graphics cards? How will they be protecting the video content? Will the XvMC support address any of the current XvMC limitations found in the open-source drivers?

We'll be able to get and share answers with you when such support arrives in the official ATI/AMD Linux driver, but in the Phoronix Forums feel free to share what you hope this HD video support will provide or any other questions you may have. If everything goes as planned, we'll have HD video support on Linux this month!