MythTV Adds Support For NVIDIA VDPAU

Last month NVIDIA brought PureVideo features to Linux through a new API they call the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix in their NVIDIA 180.xx driver.

NVIDIA also provided a set of patches that enabled MPlayer to use this API that offloads video decoding and other tasks to the GPU. The formats supported by VDPAU are currently H.264, MPEG, WMV3, and VC-1. In our VDPAU benchmarks we found this NVIDIA video implementation to work very well and the CPU usage was much lower during video playback.

With NVIDIA providing a header file in the driver that details this API, the community has been able to study VDPAU and one of the first fruits of this work is now available. Committed to MythTV is a VDPAU decoder.

VDPAU in MythTV has full OSD (On-Screen Display), de-interlacers, color controls, and codecs support through the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix. MythTV will automatically use VDPAU when it's compatible with the video format otherwise it falls back to using X-Video. According to those that have tested it already, this community VDPAU implementation in MythTV actually exceeds that of NVIDIA's patch in MPlayer when it comes to quality and its capabilities.

This should be great news to anyone with a recent NVIDIA graphics card that uses MythTV for their HTPC needs.