[mythtv-users] State of VDPAU

[Stephen Worthington]

On Mon, 4 Mar 2019 19:36:58 +0000 (UTC), you wrote:

>Hi all,
>For version 30, this is in the release notes:
>   
>   - Hardware accelerated H.265/HEVC decoding with VDPAU is not available any more for Nvidia users. (This feature may come back in MythTV 31 with the NVDEC extension. In the meantime OpenGL playback is recommended for H.265/HEVC playback. Another option is to stay with MythTV 29, perhaps with the patch in #13211, if surround sound is used, e.g. for German DVB T2 HD.)
>
>I'm in North America, terrestrial, does this impact me?  I'm thinking of upgrading to 30 and using VDPAU on older desktops (circa 2007, GeForce 8500GT) in the house.  I'm thinking I'm OK, don't even think I ever heard of HEVC, but checking with this group.
>Also, I purchased an Intel G4560 for $60 awhile ago, and I was very surprised the on CPU video seems to run MythTV flawlessly in 1080P.   I remember when VDPAU first came out, it was a pretty big deal and really helped out, but now I'm wondering if VDPAU is even relevant anymore with technological advancements in low end on chip/board video.  Or maybe VDPAU is helpful for newer standards, 4K and above.  
>Thoughts on the state of VDPAU?
>Dave

It is pretty unlikely that you will be receiving H.265 in North
America yet.  It is being broadcast on DVB-S2 in Europe for 4K
broadcasts, and Japan is using it for 4K and 8K.  But until you start
getting 4K, it is not likely to be a problem for you.  With downloaded
and streamed video, there is more of that in H.265, again usually for
4K video, but you can usually choose a lesser version in H.264 to use,
if necessary.  If your CPU is good enough, then you can just get it to
play H.265 for you.  My AMD FX-4100 CPU (quad core 3.6 GHz) is easily
capable of that, although I have only tried it on 1080 H.265 files as
I do not have any 4K capable screens.

The thing to remember in any case is that your Nvidia GPU will only be
capable of doing H.265 if it is a fairly recent one.  My GT220 is far
too old to be able to do H.265, so for quite a while I was playing
downloaded H.265 files without realising that mythfrontend was falling
back to using the CPU to do that.  Your 8500GTs are certainly not
capable of H.265, so there is no impact at all in upgrading to v30 on
them.