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

[Nicolas Will]

On Tue, 2008-02-12 at 18:14 -0500, R. G. Newbury wrote:
> Andrew Close wrote:
> > On Feb 12, 2008 2:44 PM, Brad Fuller <bradallenfuller at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> On Feb 12, 2008 12:29 PM, Nicolas Will <nico at youplala.net> wrote:
> >>> Those drivers exist. Everything is supported on it.
> >>>
> >>> The video will provide full 3D acceleration and all.
> >>>
> >>> It "just" needs the MPEG-2/H.264 acceleration. It's not worse than
> a
> >>> current nVIDIA today.
> >> you're speaking about Linux drivers, right?
> > 
> > yes, i was.  i'm pretty suer Nico was as well.
> > Nico's comment is even more encouraging in that i currently only do
> > SD, so this board would allow me to 'grow into HD' as the drivers
> > become available.  i just have to hope that the Devs involved code
> > faster than my ability to save for an HDTV. :)
> 
> The present commonly available 'intel' driver will easily do SD, on
> any 
> reasonable cpu. If your cpu has the power to do HD, it will do that
> too, 
> but you may have high CPU usage.
> 
> The cpu usage figures on the xvmc wiki page are from my machine, and
> I 
> am now not sure that those figures actually show xvmc in use. That 
> 'weird git xvmc branch' has, I think, now been merged into the master 
> branch of the intel driver, so if you want you can follow the 
> instructions on the linuxintelgraphics page (or is it 
> intellinuxgraphics?) to pull down the xf86-driver-intel code and
> build 
> it yourself.
> 
> If you get that built, you will have xvmc enabled in X (remember to 
> change your /etc/X11/XvMCConfig file).
> 
> HOWEVER, the building may not be easy. At least it was not for me. I
> had 
> to do a complete build of the xorg source, plus mesa and drm (code
> links 
> on the intel page however), in order to get the new driver to work.
> It 
> needed the Xorg 1.4 xserver. That may have been because I built the 
> driver against the new source and not the existing source. Once 
> installed it runs like a dream and IIRC my top figures are about 25% 
> with 720p HD.
> 
> Note that since this is technically an experimental build, your new 
> Xorg.0.log will be at /usr/var/log and your old one will NOT be 
> overwritten, leading you to think that nothing has changed or that
> you 
> have done something wrong. (Hint on building: comment out all of the 
> drivers you do not need, in the build script. Some will not build.)


As I said, we're not all the way there, but it is coming, and it will be
coming faster with open docs released.

For the time being the nice features are not for the faint of heart.
Compiling the whole X stuff is not a trivial thing for everyone.

Plus other things are coming, like DRI2.

I'm betting that within 1 year, we'll be mostly happy campers.

Nico