2011-10-02, 15:51
alexrose1uk Wrote:I don't disagree that's frustrating, I have pcs that use hardware acceleration myself, but to say its non-standard seems a little unfair; its not part of the bluray spec which is what those devices are targeted at, but hi10 has been part of the h264/avc standard for quite some time, about 7 years if Wikipedia is to be believed, even if its not been implemented into things or widely used until relatively recently. Its not like this profile or standard has come from nowhere. Hell, loads of phones with hardware support don't even always support up to level4.1 or the full gamut of 8bit profiles either so its not like manufacturers and designers have always stuck to the one level of specification in thier decoders either.
You are correct in that I choose my wording there poorly. I'm actually somewhat familiar with these high-end profiles/formats that are mainly used in professional/studio situations, though I am far from being an expert. For example, most people don't know that the Beta Cassette didn't die. It stayed alive in the professional word and even got a digital version that some still use today.
Quote:It just seems like an inevitable part of progress, h265 or whatever it ends up called will also likely break all hardware compatibility, which is the danger of relying on hardware.
Yes and no. It's kind of like megapixels in cameras. For a while there it seemed like there was no end in sight, then camera manufacturers decided to stop pushing for more megapixels and instead focus on higher quality sensors with the existing number of megapixels. The high end line for most consumers now is about 14MP.
You are right that something will eventually come along and replace what we have now with something significantly better. Hi10 really isn't it, and hardware manufacturers aren't going to bother to support it. Most video usage on a computer isn't "pirated", it's from places like Netflix, Hulu, and Youtube. This is why .ogg never caught on, even though anime groups were singing it's praises and saying they were .ogg only. We've been down this road before.
The next format/codec/whatever will come, and we will have to buy new stuff, sure, but it's not even going to be Hi10. There's other formats in the works that we know about today that should beat the pants off of Hi10, but are just not ready to be deployed. Hardware video codec support is not really something that takes these companies by surprise.
Hi10 has been around for 7 years and no one gave a hoot until this season. Why? Because someone was finally able to drum up some hype. Probably because they finally got a consumer player that decided to throw in Hi10 support (not out of demand, though).
People are downloading archive quality rips and are worried about saving some HDD space? (some of the quoted numbers by some groups about how much space is really over blown, too).
That's not to say that we can't use it or enjoy it today. Hi10 is, in fact, a better profile. I really want to emphasize this. We can have our cake and eat it too, but exclusive Hi10 releases is absurd for a group to do. The entire point of fansubbing was to bring anime to viewers who didn't have access. It's not the next logical step for widespread support. We don't throw away our GPUs/computers for one spec bump here or one spec bump there.
Quote:I've argued before on the benefits of hardware acceleration but this is one of the limits that accompanies it (same as how older hdmi systems or the original PS3 can't bitstream hd audio and have to use core/software decode), especially when in this case the hardware is seemingly based on the bluray adopted segments of the standard, and not the entirety.
The PS3's limitation is not because of the hardware acceleration (which does exist in the PS3) or the CPU. It's just been locked away for so long, and even now is completely undocumented for the public. It's kind of like how the hacked ATV2 can support more codecs (in theory) than h.264, but it's all undocumented so it takes a ton of work to figure it out/reverse engineer/program for.
I do understand your point, which is why my original HTPC was built to handle BD 1080/High Profile from the CPU alone. Even that guy can't handle Hi10, though, because it takes more CPU decoding for Hi10 than CPU decoding of h.264 High Profile.
Quote:It's not like there won't be groups (potentially some specifically for the purpose) reencoding these 10bit releases back to 8bit either, so I don't see there being a lack of options in the future.
And thank god for that. I'm certainly not worried, but I do think these groups that are acting like Hi10 is the second coming need a reality check.
