2008-07-30, 22:45
tusk Wrote:I also have an ATI HD 3450, which as you know has x.264 hardware decoding (DXDA). BUT, know this...most videos don't even support DXDA because there is a very specific specification for this and most people aren't taking this into account when they encode a video.I think you mean DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration), not DXDA, and DXVA is a subset of the DirectShow framework, and XBMC for Linux/Mac/Windows does not use DirectX nor DirectShow (we can't use it as it is not cross-platform as we want XBMC to run on multiple platforms).
MediaPortal is DirectX and DirectShow based and thus uses Microsoft's DirectShow framework as its audio/video player (not its own like XBMC, instead it is fully dependent on Microsoft libraries and APIs), XBMC is not DirectShow based but uses its own FFmpeg based player (no Microsoft dependencies at all), MediaPortal only works on Microsoft Windows operating-system and will only ever work on Microsoft Windows operating-system as long as it is DirectX and DirectShow based. XBMC on the other hand is a cross-platform that works on Linux, Mac, Windows and Xbox (XBMC can not be dependent on Microsoft libraries, or any other operating-system specific libraires or API as long as we want to stay a cross-platform software, and that is what we want). There are of course workarounds but they may be more work to implement that they are worth, please read these if you really are interested:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=32889
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=33381
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=19714
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Codec_and_Format_requests
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=DVDPlayer
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=MPlayer
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=29273
Again, XBMC does not curently use the GPU (Graphic Processor Unit) to decode video, (currently it is really the CPU that does all the work which is the reason you right now need a really fast one to decode 1080p H.264 videos), but someone is working on a cross-platform (operating-system independent) method for off-loading some of the video decoding process to the GPU, see => http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=33802
Please do not reply before you done more research and got some knowledge behind your words.
Wikipedia and Google are your friends, feel me?