Re: [gentoo-user] intel HD graphics 4000 and viewing DVDs

[Florian Philipp]

Am 27.07.2012 22:57, schrieb Michael Mol:
> On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 4:39 PM, Florian Philipp <lists@×××××××××××.net> wrote:
>> Am 27.07.2012 22:22, schrieb Michael Mol:
>>> On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 4:10 PM, Allan Gottlieb <gottlieb@×××.edu> wrote:
>>>> I am getting a new laptop. (likely dell 6430).
>>>> The two graphics options are intel HD 4000 and nvidia NVS 5200M.
>>>> Dell is as expected suggesting the 5200M.
>>>>
>>>> I do not need 3D or fast response.  Dell hinted that DVDs might not play
>>>> with the intel HD 4000.  This seems weird to me as the 4000 is supposed
>>>> to be a big improvement over the 3000 and I can't believe dell or others
>>>> would have sold laptops that can't play dvds
>>>>
>>>> Any comments or experiences?
>>>
>>> My Duron 750MHz was able to decode DVDs in realtime. After that, all
>>> you're doing is blitting (or using xv) the frames to the screen. I
>>> would be absolutely shocked if the Intel HD 4000 GPU couldn't handle
>>> that basic of a 2D acceleration function.
>>>
>>> Now, DVDs use MPEG2. Blu-Ray uses h.264, which is a much harder beast
>>> to decode in realtime. It's possible the HD 4000 GPU can't handle
>>> hardware decode of h.264, but I don't know. I've never looked into it.
>>> (Software decode of 1080p h.264 on my Phenom 9650 worked somewhat, but
>>> highly active scenes would cause frame drops.)
>>>
>>
>> I've experienced issues playing DVDs on fullscreen with the OSS radeon
>> driver. Therefore I'm cautious of assumptions that something works
>> simply because the input is easy to decode. Upscaling to large displays
>> with high resolutions can be an issue.
>>
>> I'm not saying the Intel driver cannot handle it. I'm just saying you
>> should try it or look for reports.
>
> How high is 'high' resolution? I was upscaling to 1600x1200 using an a
> Radeon 9600; that card would now be almost ten years old. A bit later,
> I did the same on a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 using an i845-based Intel
> graphics card. Here's the line from lspci, as run in May of 2007:
>
> 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation
> 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 01)
>
> Hardware scaling a 2D image is one of the most trivial
> hardware-accelerated options GPUs perform. If someone had difficulties
> upscaling a 480p (roughly what DVDs are) to 1080p at 24 or 33fps, I
> would be very highly suspicious of a software misconfiguration. That
> kind of scaling should even be comfortably doable in software on any
> modern x86-derived processor. (With the plausible exclusion of the
> Atom CPU)
>

1920x1080, on-board Radeon HD 4250. I haven't diagnosed it further
(except of playing around with mplayer2 options) as it was easier to use
the closed source driver.

Regards,
Florian Philipp