Hardware-based H.264 video decoding

[curvature]

I was wondering what the members of the group have to say
about this bit of rumor/news. Not knowing lots about this field,
I'd be interested to find out what technical details the author
is leaving out.

"The Great Apple Video Encoder Attack of 2007"
Apple rumored to be adding hardware-based H.264 video decoding/
encoding across product line.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070308_001806.html

P.S. Are there video capture / graphics cards for Windows PCs that
do hardware-based decoding/encoding?

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (9 Mar 2007 05:24:53 -0800) it happened "curvature"
<curva...@gmail.com> wrote in
<1173446693....@c51g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>:

THere have been several high end cards with H264 acceleration for in
the PC for over a year now.
Try Google.

[Ken Maltby]

"curvature" <curva...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1173446693....@c51g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

ATI and Nivida have had H.264 acceleration on their vid cards for
some time now. A full featured hardware H.264 encoder would be
new for a basic feature of a hardware system. There are a number
of addon hardware encoders available for the PC platform, and more
in the works.

The tightly integrated structure of the Apple platform is as much a
pain as DRM and puts very similar restrictions on the use of audio
and video. ( "i-"Audio & Video)

H.264 is a large and growing set of formats/specifications, it is not
a single codec where all versions/flavors play with a single reference
chip design. Not all H.264 can play in Quicktime now, having their
own hardware codec implementation will only make that more
obvious.

There are major differences up and down the scale of H.264
implementations. From Cell Phone, and i-Pod to High Complexity
HD presentation (including a 4:2:2 version), it's not one thing that
can be completely hardcoded and still benefit from that flexibility.

Luck;
Ken