[mythtv-users] Current wisdom on PVR-150/250/350/500

[Steven Adeff]

On 4/17/06, Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:
> On 04/17/2006 12:11 AM, Joe Votour wrote:
> > Believe me, their competition could learn a great deal
> > from just their drivers, since drivers are an
> > interface to the hardware.  As an example, the
> > competition might see in the driver some great way to
> > shrink down a transfer of data implemented in the
> > driver (which exposes how the hardware works), and
> > decide to then add that logic to their next graphics
> > chip.
>
> I really think this argument is like the argument that software
> copy-protection schemes prevent piracy.  Generally, they only stop the
> people that aren't the problem (end users) instead of stopping those
> with the time/interest/equipment/money (large-scale pirates, or the
> competition).
>
> In other words, good luck trying to convince me that ATI isn't paying a
> team of developers to reverse engineer NVIDIA's drivers /and/ hardware
> (and vice versa).  After all, look how closely capabilities and even
> designs have been tracking over the years.  I don't think that's
> completely the "free market" effect ensuring the people get what they want.
>
> And, as a matter of fact, binary-only drivers aren't even stopping end
> users from (at least partially) reverse engineering the
> drivers--reference the Windows Omega Drivers (
> http://www.omegadrivers.net/ ) and other similar projects.

NVIDIA openly admit that there is a lot of processing going on by the
drivers for 3D that they consider proprietary technology.  For this
reason they won't release an open source driver and you'll probably
never see an open source driver able to support a lot of the 3D
functions of their cards.

--
Steve