[mythtv-users] A paradigm shift is coming. Are you ready?

Nicolas Will nico at youplala.net
Tue Feb 12 16:46:40 UTC 2008


On Tue, 2008-02-12 at 10:18 -0600, Kevin Kuphal wrote:
> On Feb 12, 2008 9:35 AM, Brian Phillips <brian.phillips at gmx.net>
> wrote: 
>         jedi at mishnet.org wrote:
>           Is
>         the hardware there in video cards, but non-supported in
>         Linux?  I read
>         somewhere that directx was the method for using these GPUs to
>         their fullest,
>         so is linux therefore locked out of these GPUs to a point?
>   This is exactly the problem.  Take nvidia for example, the premier
> driver for Linux for HD playback IMO.  If I take the same card from my
> MythTV box and put it in Windows with the stock drivers, my Athlon
> 2000 PC could not play back HD content.  But, if I download the 30 day
> trial of Nvidia's PureVideo player with accelerated drivers for
> Windows, voila, my lowly processer can chew through HD no problem.
> Drivers are the issue and until Linux gets *full* featured drivers
> with the necessary hooks for applications to use them, it will always
> lag behind and be more about the CPU than the graphics board.  

This is where I fore see that nVIDIA will not be the GPU of choice for
MythTV in the medium term.

The Intel chpsets (965 and up) have pretty decent capabilities for what
we want to do with them.

They have all the good parts for MPEG2/H.264 acceleration.

Now 2 things are happening these days. X is changing its infrastructure
for video acceleration.

Intel has released stuff that was only in the hands of a few people: the
full specs. So expect a lot more people to be able to code on the Intel
driver from now on.

There is hope in having relatively cheap motherboards with integrated
GPUs, one board less, one fan less, that will be able to do HD in all
formats. The Intel chipset already has that nice way of adding ports
(HDMI, DVI, Components, s-video, composite) through cheap add-on cards.

I have such a combination. But I am currently using an nVIDIA card. The
intel driver was not mature enough (v2.1) and lacked features. It was a
complete rewrite from the i830 stuff, and only a limited people had
access to the specs.

I would be ready to bet that within 1 year we will all be laughing at
our nVIDIA days.

Then again, nVIDIA could wake-up.

nico
http://www.youplala.net/linux/home-theater-pc





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