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ATI Releases Linux Developers Kit
gravis777 writes, "Well, apparently ATI once again makes noise in the Linux market when they anounced yesterday that they had just released a developer's kit to support video hardware decoding (specifically for MPEG, MPEG2 and DVD) for Linux on their Rage 128 and Rage 128 Pro chips. " The new kit they are touting will "provides a software interface between the iDCT and motion compensation video acceleration of the ATI
RAGE 128[tm]-based accelerators, and MPEG-2 and DVD video playback formats."
The VHA is designed for the Rage 128 and 128 Pro adapters. The VHA will consist of a kernel module and a user level library and will give developers access to idct and motion compensation capabilities of these chipsets. This is not a DVD player, or even an MPEG 2 player, but rather it will allow DVD and/or MPEG 2 players take advantage of ATI hardware for accelerated playback. The SDK will include some sample code for MPEG playback though. The reason this has to be binary is so that 3rd party DVD player developers can link in this library into their DVD player and protect CSS encryption. We are going to work with Loki to incorporate VHA into their SMPEG library. This will give other developers a real world example of how to use the library. When this is complete, the patches for SMPEG will be released to the community. David Johnson ATI Developer Relations
Be careful, you're treading on marketing waters.
ATi has never claimed their video cards have on-board DVD decoders. What they claim is "DVD Acceleration".
What they mean by that is that there are special features of their video board that make typical mpeg2 display measurably quicker than it would be if you did not use those features.
Specifically, it has exactly what nearly every video card manufactured since 1994 has.
First, it has a bi-linear scaler so it can scale the size of the movie window in a whole two directions. Usually width and height.
Second, it has a pallete-dac that allows your software mpeg2 decoder to write YUV data to the framebuffer and have the video card convert it to RGB on the fly. This is nice, because most compressed video streams are YUV internally, and your monitor is unrelentingly RGB.
Now, these are nice things to have around, I don't deny that at all. But they do not a DVD decoder make.
Think of it like those BASF commercials - "We don't decode your DVD, we just make it better"
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
ANY company which suppports Linux should be applauded for it,
./ have shown. The first product to appear is certainly going to get a lot of interest. While it is certainly very important to get DVDs onto the Linux platform, it is worrying that it is only possible with COMMERCIAL SW running on a SPECIFIC graphics card.
BUT
I think it is time to realise that the times when a companies decision to support Linux was driven by some "higher" goal is starting to end.
Linux is becoming a stratetgic platform, companies are realising that getting into the Linux market will be crucial, and it will start returning a profit in the (not to distant) future.
Especially ATI has shown in the past that it does not believe in open support for its product (yes there have been some changes, but only fairly recently).
It seems that there will be a market for a Linux DVD SW player, as countless posts on
We all know the problems most commercial drivers have, when it comes to rapidly changing kernel releases, SMP, etc.
Secondly it would tie anyone who wants to watch DVD on Linux to ATI.
Thirdly, a working closed source solution might kill (or dampen) any effort to get a more open solution, as commercial partners (which seem to be necessary, given the DVD NDA constraints, etc) might fear that the market is already occupied by ATI.
Overall I believe that ATI is mainly doing a very clever strategic move, which might end up doing more harm than good to Linux as a multimedia platform.
I still hope some company will produce a CARD INDEPENDANT DVD player app, probabely with an open interface, to enable graphics card vendors to add card specific support (not absolutely necessary, as with modern processors MPEG-2 decoding can be done entirely in SW).
IMHO this would be more helpful than any graphics card dependant solution.
And lastly let's not forget that ATI only announced the SDK, I haven't heard any product announcements yet....
Just my $0.02
Frank