HTPC (XBMC/VDR) based on an APU!

[oliver]

It does not matter for me if the driver is oss or not, it has to work in first place.

It matters a lot to me

Which is why I won't go for an nvidia based part. I can oversee the catalyst driver, knowing that in a year or so, I may be able to use the OSS driver.

[Kano]

If you want to rely on oss drivers then intel is the only way to go. ati has opened specs, but NOT for the uvd(2) part. So what is currently developed is an alternative way, that might work for mpeg2 but most likely never for more demanding codecs - especially NOT with the slowest chips. Intel vaapi uses the hw decoding engine. Btw. the reverse engineered nouveau driver is not worse than ati oss overall, just dynamic clocks are not supported, reclocking is a bit tricky in a manual way. The best driver for htpc is nvidia as binary or intel for oss, but ati has the worst binary / oss drivers for video decode accelleration.

[pingufunkybeat]

So what is currently developed is an alternative way, that might work for mpeg2 but most likely never for more demanding codecs - especially NOT with the slowest chips.

Nonsense. This is exactly what Catalyst (under Windows) does on r500 hardware, which lacks a UVD block.

Btw. the reverse engineered nouveau driver is not worse than ati oss overall

It only works reliably for some hardware, and even there, it's less stable. A couple of VDrift benchmarks do not tell the whole story.

[Kano]

And you are really sure catalyst has full accelleration with r500 within win? I highly doubt that, which app should be able to use it? vlc most likely not because you need a recent catalyst for that. vlc does not work with intel drivers and win btw.

[curaga]

The R5xx family introduced a more advanced onboard motion-video engine. Like the Radeon cards since the R100, the R5xx can offload almost the entire MPEG-1/2 video pipeline. The R5xx can also assist in Microsoft WMV9/VC-1 and MPEG H.264/AVC decoding, by a combination of the 3D/pipeline's shader-units and the motion-video engine. Benchmarks show only a modest decrease in CPU-utilization for VC-1 and H.264 playback.

Wikipedia, people. MC only for good codecs it appears.

[AnonymousCoward]

Ya there isn't any mainstream L51 content yet. Unless you have a RED camera and are looking to decode it on a 30" monitor at native res.

Since Kano didn't feel the need to answer my question about the L5.1 encoded sources he was using, it probably involves pirated content. Those idiots often don't know how to do a proper encode, and they will never learn to do a proper encode as long as users such as Kano are directing their complaints to the wrong people.


ps Don't worry Kano, I won't report you to the MPAA

[deanjo]

Since Kano didn't feel the need to answer my question about the L5.1 encoded sources he was using, it probably involves pirated content. Those idiots often don't know how to do a proper encode, and they will never learn to do a proper encode as long as users such as Kano are directing their complaints to the wrong people.


ps Don't worry Kano, I won't report you to the MPAA

lol actually it is the release groups that DO know how to encode. (Yes there are bad encodes as well, usually "p2p groups" and not "scene groups")but the dominant groups are masters of their trade and are probably amongst the most tech savy when it comes to video encoding.

[AnonymousCoward]

lol actually it is the release groups that DO know how to encode. (Yes there are bad encodes as well, usually "p2p groups" and not "scene groups")but the dominant groups are masters of their trade and are probably amongst the most tech savy when it comes to video encoding.

Well, if they use encoding params that are above blu-ray spec, which they are (otherwise Kano wouldn't be complaining) then yes they are idiots. Because many hardware decoder is made with blu-ray spec in mind and often cannot handle anything above.

[deanjo]

Well, if they use encoding params that are above blu-ray spec, which they are (otherwise Kano wouldn't be complaining) then yes they are idiots. Because many hardware decoder is made with blu-ray spec in mind and often cannot handle anything above.

It wouldn't be the pirate releases that Kano would trying to play. Such types of releases above spec would be nuked and against the release rules.

[droidhacker]

Hey OP: Check out JETWAY NC85-E350-LF. Specifically, its an E350 with mini-PCIe socket, which allows you to snap in a CRYSTALHD. You can then run radeon OSS along with CRYSTALHD OSS for your h264 decoding/playback needs. I'm running a Sempron 140/RS785 board (JETWAY NC84E-LF) with a crystalhd decoder for my HTPC, it works great!

Neat thing about the HARDWARE decoder is that it satisfies all the h264 licensing requirements -- you'll *never* get h264 decoding out of the box on any US based Linux distro *except* for licensed hardware decoding. That means that Redhat and Ubuntu WILL NEVER SHIP shader based h264 acceleration, but... Redhat *already does* ship crystalhd support (with Fedora). In other words, the only part missing from a bone stock Fedora install for h264 playback, is AUDIO DECODING, but that will come with your media player/center anyway.


For those who think that the AMD UVD is just a wrapper around shader based decoding.... sorry, no it is not. In fact, Crystalhd is actually built on tech sold to broadcom BY AMD. Its not identical, but forked off an earlier version of what amounts to UVD.