[knappster]

I saw a post recently that VDPAU support is being dropped in v19 of Kodi:
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2795441

It's been many years since I have used anything besides nvidia for linux because their drivers have more or less "just worked".  Even though v18 hasn't had its official release yet, I wanted to try to get ahead of the game to see what the path forward will be and open a discussion on which desktop / htpc gpu manufacturers will likely have the best support.  I seem to remember that nvdec may not be supported by Kodi in the immediate future either, so it appears that it could become painful to use hardware decoding with nvidia after Kodi v18.  Thanks in advance for any information.

[Common Man]

I don't know what the Kodi Team position is but there are a few good reasons to keep VDPAU around even if frozen since there will still be a lot of Kodi installations running on cards supported on VDPAU who don't need to do any 10-bit decoding, etc. They are not necessarily going to upgrade hardware to be able to use Kodi.

The other reason is interesting development is open-source projects being planned to have a VDPAU compatibility layer over NVDEC/CUDA layer for backward compatibility. This is similar to the VDPAU over VAAPI/GL that existed a while ago to be able to run programs that only did VDPAU over Intel Graphics. Not a simple project but I suspect some form of it will be available by the time Kodi 19 rolls around.

It is possible, not being familiar with Kodi architecture, that such a compatibility layer will not be sufficient or that keeping VDPAU around and working with evolving Kodi needs will become impractical on its own.

Dropping VDPAU will certainly be a disruptive if not a showstopper event for a subset of the installed base.

Also to add: VAAPI layer over NVDEC/CUDA is unlikely to happen because of architectural reasons from what I understand.

The alternative which may not be as good is to use NVDEC hardware acceleration only for decoding compressed video bits which should be easier using a stand-alone NDEC/CUDA codec that is already available but copying the output from graphic memory to system memory and using OpenGL to create/drive display (which may use hardware support inside it). Performance will be affected but I don't know if that will matter in practice or how. Not an expert or even very knowledgeable in this area, just based on some research I have been doing so far.

[fritsch]

In short: if you maintain it - you can keep it.

[knappster]

In short: if you maintain it - you can keep it.

 @fritsch I am the OP and would like to clarify... I am not trying to stir up anything with this thread.  I accept the fact that vdpau may/will not be supported in v19.  I would just like guidance on where video hardware acceleration development will be focused and kindly ask for recommendations for Linux HTPC gpus that will use that technology.

[fritsch]

To be very honest with you: For now - we (the remaining linux gang) have no idea yet. We hope to get some nasty bugs fixed in the 18.x version but nothing more yet. GLES platforms might go towards GLES 3.x improvement with PBOs and better shader performance which will help you on GBM / wayland with GLES but for VDPAU this won't help and for NVDEC also not.