[mythtv-users] FYI - New HW video accellAPI from NVIDIA

[Justin The Cynical]

Steven Adeff wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 3:03 PM, Travis Tabbal <travis at tabbal.net> wrote:
>> Considering the cost of the supported GPUs, it seems that the 3Ghz dual core
>> CPUs are the way to go for now.
>>
>> Now, if it supported older mobo chipsets, like the 61xx series, it could be
>> quite useful for many of us. I see no need to put a powerful and expensive
>> graphics card in my frontend when the CPU can do it just fine for about a
>> $40-$50 premium over the CPU I would need anyway.
> 
> those older chipsets just don't have the design to handle processing
> that data, it's not a matter of driver support.

I have a problem with this idea.

According to the PDF on the Nvidia site[1][2], every PCIe chipset (and 
some of the AGP ones as well) back to the GeForce Go 6600 is supported 
by PureVideo, which includes "H.264 Decode Acceleration".

Looking further, the only major difference between the 6xxx and 7xxx+ 
series is support for "MPEG-2 Inverse Telecine" for HD, which is only 
supported for the 7600 GT and up.

If NVidia can get it[3] running under windows with older chipsets, I 
don't see any reason for the Linux equivalent to be crippled in 
comparison.  The only reason I can think of is they went for the newer 
chipsets, which may have the larger share of the NVidia/Linux market, 
never mind that the removed XVMC support from the 8XXX and up chipsets 
under Linux (which is the main reason I was looking at NVidia cards when 
building my current FE/BE).

IMO, if NVidia pulls their collective heads out and makes this new 
driver API about the same as PureVideo when discussing chipset support, 
this may do a lot about repairing their bruised reputation within many 
FOSS circles.

[1] Which appears to be based on version 158.18 of the windows drivers
[2] http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html
[3] It being H.264 Decode Acceleration and other such things