[mythtv-users] Just how great can VDPAU be?

[Yeechang Lee]

Like everyone else, Nvidia's surprise announcement[1] of VDPAU has
excited me. I've already begun imagining buying an inexpensive fanless
8-series card and instantly making my frontend capable of playing
full-bit h.264 HD-PVR recordings as well as the MPEG-2 recordings it
does such a great job with, instead of building a new high-powered
Core 2 Duo box.

On second thought, though, I'm not sure how realistic this is. My
understanding is that VDPAU is basically an updated version of
PureVision, Nvidia's longstanding hardware-dependent video
decoding-offloader for Windows.

I watch AVSForum's HD-PVR forum for Windows users. Intermixed with the
numerous messages detailing forum members' ever more-convoluted ways
of recording and watching their TV shows--Rube Goldberg-like setups
that would make any MythTV user alternately burst out in laughter and
shake his head in pity---are many reports of how horsepower-dependent
HD-PVR recordings are, even for Core 2 Duo owners using CoreAVC. In
other words, despite their having PureVision already, things don't
seem to be any better performancewise on that side on the pond.

Am I mistaken? What am I missing, if anything? The recently-posted
test of VDPAU and mplayer
(<URL:http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/357702#357702>)
is certainly *very* encouraging regarding both GPU and (more
importantly) CPU usage, but a) Jason used a Core 2 Duo box and b) as
we all know, mplayer isn't the MythTV internal player.

[1] 2008 has certainly been a year of exciting MythTV-related
announcements, eh? It opened with the HD-PVR announcement--something
we'd all hoped for but, I don't think, anyone expected quite so
soon--and now it is closing with this.

-- 
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