[pinelights]

Hi i am at a crossroads w.r.t HEVC like many here and i have some questions:

Suppose to date i have up to 1080p/8 bit HEVC (no 4K/10 bit) stored in my hdds : what is the minimum processor that could play these smoothly? My past experiences have taught me Core 2 Duos and Athlon X2s are not up to the task but i thought i'd clear this up in this forum ^^ Suppose i have two options (basically spare CPUs/boards)

1) Phenom II X3 720BE and
2) Core 2 Quad Q8400

would either or both be enough for up to 1080p/8 bit HEVC?

My last question is the current state of 4k/10 bit HEVC support in Windows

Am i correct to say that currently

1) Only GTX 950/960 has actual hardware decoder for 4k/10 bit HEVC?
2) Latest Kodi versions allows hardware decoder to work (with default Kodi player) in the presence of the GPUs mentioned in #1
3) Windows 7 onwards supports this?

[Soulbind]

Hi i am at a crossroads w.r.t HEVC like many here and i have some questions:

Suppose to date i have up to 1080p/8 bit HEVC (no 4K/10 bit) stored in my hdds : what is the minimum processor that could play these smoothly? My past experiences have taught me Core 2 Duos and Athlon X2s are not up to the task but i thought i'd clear this up in this forum ^^ Suppose i have two options (basically spare CPUs/boards)

1) Phenom II X3 720BE and
2) Core 2 Quad Q8400

would either or both be enough for up to 1080p/8 bit HEVC?

My last question is the current state of 4k/10 bit HEVC support in Windows

Am i correct to say that currently

1) Only GTX 950/960 has actual hardware decoder for 4k/10 bit HEVC?
2) Latest Kodi versions allows hardware decoder to work (with default Kodi player) in the presence of the GPUs mentioned in #1
3) Windows 7 onwards supports this?

1) And the GTX980 i think, and yes, these are from the Nvidia camp. Have no clue about ATI.
2) No, Kodi 16 does not have hardware decoding for 10 bit HVEC. Only 8bit.
3) Yes (Kodi does not even run on XP anyway).

[pinelights]

Thank you Soulbind : do you mean default player Kodi 16 does not support hw decoding 10 bit HEVC at all or it could via external player/non default player?

As for discrete GPU : actually i am awaiting what Polaris/Pascal (no camp preference) brings to the table later this year - i don't game at all and if i had to add a discrete GPU for 4k 10 bit HEVC i vastly prefer a single slot, low power and possibly passively cooled one

[Soulbind]

Thank you Soulbind : do you mean default player Kodi 16 does not support hw decoding 10 bit HEVC at all or it could via external player/non default player?

As for discrete GPU : actually i am awaiting what Polaris/Pascal (no camp preference) brings to the table later this year - i don't game at all and if i had to add a discrete GPU for 4k 10 bit HEVC i vastly prefer a single slot, low power and possibly passively cooled one

Via an external player , yeah , Kodi would work, something like launching MPC-HC for playback as an external player would work fine.
I "think" there still is development being done with DS Player http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=222576 which would let you use LAV Filters as external filters for HEVC decoding. Should work and will give you 10 bit decoding in the kodi internal player under Windows.

But by the time Polaris/Pascal come out, Kodi might get official 10bit support , who knows First ffmpeg needs to add it into mainline. I also heard Nvidia is launching a second generation (Second Edition) GTX 750 based on GM 206 http://www.custompcreview.com/news/nvidi...gpu/27267/ which should have 10bit HEVC decoding capabilities and HDMI 2.0 , and should be single slot (but probabl not passive cooled). This one shoud arrive sooner.

[DJ_Izumi]

The 960 is also a rather expensive proposition JUST to get HEVC decode into a PC based HTPC. It'd make more sense to wait until those chip families have had cheaper cousins manufactured, which being less capable at gaming, would be a more reasonable proposition to fit into an HTPC just for video decode.

[Soulbind]

The 960 is also a rather expensive proposition JUST to get HEVC decode into a PC based HTPC. It'd make more sense to wait until those chip families have had cheaper cousins manufactured, which being less capable at gaming, would be a more reasonable proposition to fit into an HTPC just for video decode.

Agreed, unless you actually use it for gaming, getting a 200$ GPU just for HEVC is a tough sell, considering a Shield has this capability and costs 200$ for the whole package, not just a GPU.

[kadajawi]

The problem is that the 960 is really that it goes way too far for just decoding HEVC. That's like getting a large truck to transport a flower pot. Yes, it will be able to do the job, but a small simple car will do the job just as well... You are paying a hefty price tag for gaming, when you aren't going to use those capabilities.

Isn't the 950 based on the 960, so it has the same capabilities? It can play back HEVC just as well, but isn't as suitable for gaming. Which I suppose isn't what you want to do anyway. Power consumption is lower, price tag is lower... and further down the road there will be more cards that cost even less (and are not as focused on gaming).

[Soulbind]

Yes, it is, and yes, i can do 10bit H265 just like the 960. And it's still a gaming card , you just need to lower settings a little, but it's still decent at gaming. Still a little expensive for 150 $ (list price on amazon) just for video playback.

Hopefully Nvidia does release some low end cards , but they seem reluctant after Intel beat their 940m with the Skylake Iris Pro integrated GPUs.

[Topken]

Yeah very suprised we have not seen 910,920,930,940 yet. Those would be the great HTPC cards if NVidia decided to put them out. Do a 920 with the bells and whistles such as HDMI 2.0+ HDCP 2.2 HEVC 10bit h264 10bit and normal 8bit HDR and the works for HTPC purposes and price at at $50 or so and it would be the go to card for HTPC people. But NVidia seem relcent to put anything like that out at least right now. We might see something based on Pascal tho aka 1k series if they don't rename things again.

[kadajawi]

Maybe they feel like it isn't worth the effort? Problem is if they don't do it now, there won't be much of a market left soon.

[noggin]

Yeah very suprised we have not seen 910,920,930,940 yet. Those would be the great HTPC cards if NVidia decided to put them out. Do a 920 with the bells and whistles such as HDMI 2.0+ HDCP 2.2 HEVC 10bit h264 10bit and normal 8bit HDR and the works for HTPC purposes and price at at $50 or so and it would be the go to card for HTPC people. But NVidia seem relcent to put anything like that out at least right now. We might see something based on Pascal tho aka 1k series if they don't rename things again.

8-bit HDR? Does that even exist - would need to use very odd gamma or similar logarithmic range to do so wouldn't it?

AIUI 10 or 12 bits are required for HDR.

Totally agree with the rest of your sentiment. The glacial progress on HDMI 2.0 / 2.0a GPUs is surprising. We've had HDMI 2.0 displays for a couple of years now - and still have very few GPUs with native HDMI 2.0 outputs.

[Topken]

@noggin it was meant more as 8bit, HDR

[rickyman]

can intel hd4000 play h.265 movie files or not?

Video
ID : 1
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : [email protected]
Codec ID : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration : 45mn 25s
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Writing library : x265 1.5:[Windows][GCC 4.9.0][64 bit]
Encoding settings : wpp / ctu=64 / tu-intra-depth=1 / tu-inter-depth=1 / me=1 / subme=2 / merange=57 / no-rect / no-amp / max-merge=2 / temporal-mvp / no-early-skip / no-fast-cbf / rdpenalty=0 / no-tskip / no-tskip-fast / strong-intra-smoothing / no-lossless / no-cu-lossless / no-constrained-intra / no-fast-intra / open-gop / interlace=0 / keyint=240 / min-keyint=24 / scenecut=40 / rc-lookahead=20 / bframes=4 / bframe-bias=0 / b-adapt=2 / ref=3 / weightp / no-weightb / aq-mode=1 / aq-strength=1.00 / cbqpoffs=0 / crqpoffs=0 / rd=3 / psy-rd=0.30 / psy-rdoq=0.00 / signhide / lft / sao / no-sao-non-deblock / b-pyramid / cutree / rc=crf / crf=20.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / ipratio=1.40 / pbratio=1.30
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709
Color range : Limited

[Soulbind]

No, when the HD4000 first appeared on IvyBridge, HEVC didn't even exist...

[kadajawi]

The HD4000 can't, but the i3, i5 and i7 CPUs it was attached to shouldn't have any problems...