[mythtv-users] BBC HD (1080) h.264 / AVC playback

[ian at duckland.org]

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Steven Adeff wrote:
>
> I also think the old arguement that companies that have binary drivers
> will all of a sudden stop without releasing some OSS version is a
> little dated, linux may not be mainstream yet, but as time goes on it
> is proving to be a worthy platform for hardware vendors to support. I
> think end of days scenario's need not apply any more.

<semi-rant>
Not so much... ;) Ever tried to use BIOS-based RAID with Linux?  Last 
month I had a situation where the original vendor that OEMed the driver over to 
Intel just plain stopped updating the driver.  They only shipped a binary 
driver, and no mechanism to build a new one... The motherboard was 
an Intel SE7230NH1, using LSI RAID.  The driver they ship supports RHEL 3 
(only up to Update 5) and RHEL 4 (up to update 1).  I wouldn't dream of 
using it with Fedora...

So, at one point they supported it, then they just decided to stop...

And, admittedly not their fault, nVidia's own driver has stopped building 
in a few cases on some newer kernels.  Usually it's because a kernel 
interface has changed, or a needed file has been removed from the kernel 
(the config.h file is a recent example)... that one also bit anyone using 
the Cisco VPNclient.  That's why we have vpnc.  And that's why, although 
the nVidia driver currently works better than the nv driver (and we all 
want our stuff to work), the OSS community should at least try to do our 
bit to get the nv driver that's in the kernel to support more advanced 
features.  I've seen evidence of this in FC6 with nv working just fine on 
my 1280x800 laptop display.  I'd like more, just in case...

</semi-rant>

 	-Ian