Re: [gentoo-user] intel HD graphics 4000 and viewing DVDs

[Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 4:39 PM, Florian Philipp <lists@binarywings.net> wrote:
> Am 27.07.2012 22:22, schrieb Michael Mol:
>> On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 4:10 PM, Allan Gottlieb <gottlieb@nyu.edu> wrote:
>>> I am getting a new laptop. (likely dell 6430).
>>> The two graphics options are intel HD 4000 and nvidia NVS 5200M.
>>> Dell is as expected suggesting the 5200M.
>>>
>>> I do not need 3D or fast response.  Dell hinted that DVDs might not play
>>> with the intel HD 4000.  This seems weird to me as the 4000 is supposed
>>> to be a big improvement over the 3000 and I can't believe dell or others
>>> would have sold laptops that can't play dvds
>>>
>>> Any comments or experiences?
>>
>> My Duron 750MHz was able to decode DVDs in realtime. After that, all
>> you're doing is blitting (or using xv) the frames to the screen. I
>> would be absolutely shocked if the Intel HD 4000 GPU couldn't handle
>> that basic of a 2D acceleration function.
>>
>> Now, DVDs use MPEG2. Blu-Ray uses h.264, which is a much harder beast
>> to decode in realtime. It's possible the HD 4000 GPU can't handle
>> hardware decode of h.264, but I don't know. I've never looked into it.
>> (Software decode of 1080p h.264 on my Phenom 9650 worked somewhat, but
>> highly active scenes would cause frame drops.)
>>
>
> I've experienced issues playing DVDs on fullscreen with the OSS radeon
> driver. Therefore I'm cautious of assumptions that something works
> simply because the input is easy to decode. Upscaling to large displays
> with high resolutions can be an issue.
>
> I'm not saying the Intel driver cannot handle it. I'm just saying you
> should try it or look for reports.

How high is 'high' resolution? I was upscaling to 1600x1200 using an a
Radeon 9600; that card would now be almost ten years old. A bit later,
I did the same on a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 using an i845-based Intel
graphics card. Here's the line from lspci, as run in May of 2007:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation
82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 01)

Hardware scaling a 2D image is one of the most trivial
hardware-accelerated options GPUs perform. If someone had difficulties
upscaling a 480p (roughly what DVDs are) to 1080p at 24 or 33fps, I
would be very highly suspicious of a software misconfiguration. That
kind of scaling should even be comfortably doable in software on any
modern x86-derived processor. (With the plausible exclusion of the
Atom CPU)

-- 
:wq