Don't Keep Dreaming For Linux Video Improvements On Intel's Old Platforms

If you are still using old Intel Ironlake-era hardware and have been waiting for video playback improvements via VA-API, you might as well stop waiting.

While Ironlake/G45 era hardware was able to play GPU-accelerated 1080p videos on Windows, some Linux users have been waiting for the Video Acceleration API support on Linux to be improved in order to enjoy stutter-free playback. But as one Phoronix reader pointed out to me this week, Intel has finally marked the bug tracker as "CLOSED WONTFIX" for the issue.

The bug about poor video playback on Ironlake with VA-API was closed and won't be fixed with Intel's Sean Kelley commenting, "this much older platform has limited support." That bug in particular has been open since March 2012 about poor video playback on Ironlake hardware under Linux. The VA-API G45 support was published back in 2011 as open-source but as some users argue the support was "never really usable."

You are best off now upgrading to newer Intel hardware for better video playback capabilities that is still being refined with VA-API or if wanting to keep your old Intel hardware to pop in a budget NVIDIA graphics card to enjoy VDPAU acceleration or even a cheap AMD graphics card with VDPAU acceleration via the Gallium3D driver.