Curious about video accelartion

[Blacksmith]

Just a number of comments on the previous post.

One of the major things I learned as a tech was not to touch things that were working correctly. some people bring great difficulties on them selves by constantly changing things. Now this is quite OK if one understands the consequences.

Second point is I live in a relatively remote area, the cost of travel to pick up supplies and visits friends way exceeds the minor cost of power savings and I DID do a detailed study on this, the cost of any upgrades in the end not being justified.A point well worth remembering I live in an area the gets very hot occasional in summer and I do not have air conditioning, good air circulation in my systems being critcal.

[popper]

Just a number of comments on the previous post.

One of the major things I learned as a tech was not to touch things that were working correctly. some people bring great difficulties on them selves by constantly changing things. Now this is quite OK if one understands the consequences.

Second point is I live in a relatively remote area, the cost of travel to pick up supplies and visits friends way exceeds the minor cost of power savings and I DID do a detailed study on this, the cost of any upgrades in the end not being justified.A point well worth remembering I live in an area the gets very hot occasional in summer and I do not have air conditioning, good air circulation in my systems being critcal.

yeah sure i get it, im not saying CONSTANTLY change things but you do need to balance the longer term goals with picking the inefficient option especially in your remote case id choose the lower power and lower heat "hardware decode" option at all costs today.

you can pick up an ARM cortex if you really wanted to go the whole way OC but x86 with the right options setup can also work in your case to massively reduce heat and power usage, you do get that right ?

[Blacksmith]

Yes, I unerstand one must have a balanced approach to change V faclities. To a great extent this is a matter of the way one wishes to work and how one views the world. I also prefer a general approach to items I use and I do not REAL like a machine JUST for videos. My entertainment being some DVD's and developing and playing with train simulators and designing and building various items in my workshop.

A point a will clarify where I live one CANNOT get items delivered, except by post and these days few will post items. This means to get most things requires a considerable expense for travel. This makes a lot of items most regard as required not really viable. Note, I chose to live where I live, I like the quite life, it does have disadantages but these come with the territory (for instance I look after two water systems garden and drinking water). A lot of people wishing to move to the "bush" do NOT understand this and do not last long.

[Blacksmith]

yeah sure i get it, im not saying CONSTANTLY change things but you do need to balance the longer term goals with picking the inefficient option especially in your remote case id choose the lower power and lower heat "hardware decode" option at all costs today.

you can pick up an ARM cortex if you really wanted to go the whole way OC but x86 with the right options setup can also work in your case to massively reduce heat and power usage, you do get that right ?

A number of times you have brought up power use and eficiency. As previously stated I did a detailed study on this. For energy use my greatest cost by far comes from travel. The next use down from this is two fold pumping costs for the garden and heating costs in winter, these combined being around 20% of the travel costs. Electrical use for the rest of the house including the machine shop would be less than third of the pumpimg and heating costs, ie only around 7% of total energy costs. I calculated improving the energy useage of the house would not effect the overal expense by more than 1 or 2 % a far greater improvement can be made by planning travel and a change in the vehicle to a diesel, the both of which I have done, total savings being at least a couple of thousand a year.

[barkas]

A number of times you have brought up power use and eficiency. As previously stated I did a detailed study on this. For energy use my greatest cost by far comes from travel. The next use down from this is two fold pumping costs for the garden and heating costs in winter, these combined being around 20% of the travel costs. Electrical use for the rest of the house including the machine shop would be less than third of the pumpimg and heating costs, ie only around 7% of total energy costs. I calculated improving the energy useage of the house would not effect the overal expense by more than 1 or 2 % a far greater improvement can be made by planning travel and a change in the vehicle to a diesel, the both of which I have done, total savings being at least a couple of thousand a year.

I don't care about your travel costs, nor about the energy costs of my htpc, please stop being so closeminded. That a feature is of no use to you does not mean it's not essential to others.

[HokTar]

I think there are two things which people keep constantly missing about video decoding:

1) Some people still use dual core machines and still want to watch high bitrate 1080p stuff where they could use some help from their (usually) low-medium level VGA.
2) Hardware decoding is fancy stuff but afaik _none_ of the accelarators on the market today actually support 10 bit h264 which makes them completely useless for many. Hence the need for the shader-based approach. That, or go and by a powerful enough CPU and water-cool it...

Unfortunately for me I'm part of both groups. Nowadays the realistic solution seems to be to buy a whole new machine for a task for which my 3.5 year old laptop *should* be more than sufficient. I reckon planned obsolence works brilliantly here...

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Hence the need for the shader-based approach.

Already tested by AMD - not enough fast.

Hardware decoding is fancy stuff but afaik _none_ of the accelarators on the market today actually support 10 bit h264 which makes them completely useless for many.
Unfortunately for me I'm part of both groups.

Probably you may still use your GPU for watching BD-Remux, not BD-Rip. Not ideal solution at all, but you don't need to waste money in this case.