Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 28 May 2008 09:15:58 +0100
From:      Dieter <freebsd@sopwith.solgatos.com>
To:        freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: TV-Tuner cards ( NTSC / PAL / SECAM ) - which works best? 
Message-ID:  <200805281615.QAA16740@sopwith.solgatos.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 28 May 2008 09:37:57 BST." <1211963877.10665.48.camel@localhost> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> > You can get decoder chips, for example:
> >=20
> >   Broadcom BCM70010 and BCM70012 claim to decode HD.
> >   Mpeg2 up to 125 Mbps, H.264 up to 40 Mbps.
> >=20
> >   Available as chips, or on PCIe, PCIe mini, and ExpressCard 34 cards.
> >=20
> >   Under $40.
> >=20
> >   Product brief:
> >   http://www.broadcom.com/collateral/pb/70010_70012-PB00.pdf
> >=20
> >   A BSD device driver would need to be written.  And you need
> >   a free slot.  (Free slot?  What's that?)
> 
> That sounds freakin awesome. Wonder if they can handle MBAFF encoding.

I don't know.  We need a data sheet for the chip.

That is one problem with decoder chips, they may not work with new codecs.
Some of them are said to not work well with freeze frame, slow/fast motion,
reverse, etc, anything but normal forward 1x play.

Another method is a DSP chip.  Less expensive and less power/heat than
a CPU.  And you can program it to handle new codecs.  The problem is
finding one that is fast enough.

> > ATI has documented some of their graphics chips.  The penguins
> > have them offloading some of the video decode work.  Is anyone
> > working on getting this working with BSD?
> >=20
> > The 780G is supposed to be able to decode HD H.264, but I don't know
> > if they've documented that chip or not.
> 
> All Nvidia chips from 6600 (ish) up can accelerate H264, and all Ati
> with 'avivo' (1xxx series) can also do it. The problem is, they can only
> accelerate within windows. Theres no open API that would allow apps +
> drivers to accelerate video decoding. There is a started project at
> freedesktop working on video acceleration apis [3], but it isn't exactly
> making stellar progress :)

I was thinking Xv and XvMC.   IIUC the penguins have at least Xv working
with some ATI chips.



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200805281615.QAA16740>