ATI or Nvidia for Hardware accelerated playback

Hello,

My new build, which I quickly outline here:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1036159008&posted=1#post1036159008

is going to need to stream HD from the web, and hopefully play blu ray. I'd like to run a linux distro, most likely Ubuntu on this machine. I'm being told that ATI hardware acceleration is not as well supported in Linux as Nvidia hardware acceleration. Is this true, or is this older thinking?

Thanks

Linux and ATI don't get along well, generally speaking. Your best bet would be to use a Nvidia chipset. You can get ATI cards to work, but their performance suffers, and it's more of a hassle then it's worth, imo. Also, AFAIK, I don't think you need a GPU to stream over the web really, as the transcoding can be done by the CPU. However, I'm not 100% sure.

I was thinking the hardware acceleration would be needed for blu ray playback.

Hardware acceleration isn't required for anything, you just need a fast enough CPU and it consumes more power. Last I checked, ATI open source drivers are still pretty immature and neither support hardware acceleration (at least without leveraging OpenCL).

For now you'd be much better off with nVidia, but hopefully ATI's openness will cause the open-source drivers to improve rapidly and that situation may change in the next year or two.

But as for BluRay? Good luck. I don't think there's a good way to do this on Linux.

Wingy said:

I was thinking the hardware acceleration would be needed for blu ray playback.

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The only time a GPU is needed is when directly playing from the machine, as far as video goes. The CPU will take care of all the work needed to transcode and stream the video.

keenan said:

Hardware acceleration isn't required for anything, you just need a fast enough CPU and it consumes more power. Last I checked, ATI open source drivers are still pretty immature and neither support hardware acceleration (at least without leveraging OpenCL).

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Some of the ATI drivers are working, but as keenan said, they're very immature and perform quite poorly.

keenan said:

But as for BluRay? Good luck. I don't think there's a good way to do this on Linux.

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BluRay and Linux don't get along well unfortunately. Since everybody outside the Linux community seems to have an unhealthy obsession with restricting the shit out of everything they can, they've made it quite difficult for us. Not saying it can't be done...

It's possible (although a little cumbersome) to play HD DVD and Blu-Ray films on Ubuntu.

Audio in some films may not yet be supported.

The AACS 'Digital Rights Management' system in most HD-DVD and all Blu-Ray discs attempts to stop consumers from exercising fair use rights...

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You can read the rest of the explanation, as well as a guide on how to get BluRay working in Ubuntu here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/BluRayAndHDDVD

This is worth reading as well:
http://themediaviking.com/software/bluray-linux/

NVidia has always made better drivers, than ATI, for Linux. Although you may see an ATI card in my sig., but I soon, will be switching back to NV, thanks to their latest release of cheaper, lower power cards.

nVidia has always been the undisputed choice for Linux based on their drivers and Linux support in general.

I highly recommend nVidia in general for any O.S.

In my experiences the ATI Linux drivers have been missing even basic functionality (second DVI port won't work as DVI-D, etc)

nVidia all the way.

Windows would be a different story.