ATI Releases Linux Developers Kit 82
gravis777 writes, "Well, apparently ATI once again makes noise in the Linux market when they anounced yesterday that they had just released a developer's kit to support video hardware decoding (specifically for MPEG, MPEG2 and DVD) for Linux on their Rage 128 and Rage 128 Pro chips. " The new kit they are touting will "provides a software interface between the iDCT and motion compensation video acceleration of the ATI
RAGE 128[tm]-based accelerators, and MPEG-2 and DVD video playback formats."
So the real question is... (Score:2)
And of course the other real question is was it a _Cuban_ cigar?
Wow.. it just keeps getting better (Score:2)
One thing that does concern me is the DVD playback features in the devel kit. Does this mean that ATI is standing behind the Linux side of DeCSS? Or do they have a builtin decoding key for playing DVD's? Considering most people these days just want to be able to watch the Matrix and such on their computers like all the WinX users out there, I think either way ATI's definatly hit on something.
They mention in the article that 'well known software developers' will be privy to their SDK, but what about the rest of us? I'd like to see it turn into a set of kernel or X hooks myself to support both ATI and other video card producers (Matrox, CL, etc.)
-Dysan2k
Re:So the real question is... (Score:1)
So what does that really mean ... (Score:1)
IBM released their VIA-Voice SDK many months ago, but I am still to see a single useful application come out of it. Not even an announcement of a project trying to use it.
Is this what is fated for this SDK as well???
DVD?!!!!! (Score:2)
This makes me very happy... now I can code and watch Anime at the same time.
Whee hee.
-- Neil
Yay (Score:1)
And what about 3d support for this chip under linux?
Right now I'm stuck using windows 98 because I want to beable to play quake 3.
Very cool! (Score:3)
The only other thing you need to make your ATi complete is the TV.... get gatos (General ATI TV and Overlay Software ATI-TV) at http://www.core.binghamton.edu/~ins omnia/gatos/ [binghamton.edu]
With this SDK we'll be able to combine all these features + DVD into one driver.
Awesome! I only wish other comps. did this... (*cough* nVidia *cough*)
--
GroundAndPound.com [groundandpound.com] News and info for martial artists of all styles.
Good/Bad. (Score:1)
This is good news. A little late though. Does any one know if the Voodoo3 3500 mpeg playback is supported under linux?
So? (Score:1)
ATI VHA (Score:5)
Interesting timing (Score:1)
The timing of this confirms my suspicion that world revolves around me. ;-) CoolerMaster has just informed me that the case I want is now available, so I am ordering a new Athlon box today for Firewall/MP3/DVD/games. (But not for hacking & internet! I'm keeping my Amiga!) The plan was to buy Matrox video stuff, but this announcement makes me hesitate.
Hmm.. If I get a ATI's stuff instead, I can have vendor-supported hardware MPEG playback very soon. The catch is that I'll be "selling out" the OSS community by accepting a binary. And there are selfish reasons to reject it too -- that binary's support could disappear at any time that ATI feels like it. Hmm.
OTOH, Matrox hasn't even gone as far as releasing a binary driver for their Rainbow Runner MPEG accellerator. Hmm.. Anyone have advice?
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Woohoo! (Score:1)
Re:Good/Bad. (Score:1)
Re:So the real question is... (Score:1)
Does the software/hardware enforce zones, or is it zone-free?
Nonono... the hardware accelleration is only for certain parts of the mpeg2-decoding. CSS has nothing to do with this.
Re:Yay (Score:2)
3d support is being worked on, under contract with ATI, by Precision Insight. If it's not included in XFree86 4.0, it should be out be the end of Q2.
As for your fonts... My suggestion is downloading
XFree86-Rage128-1.3-2mdk, if you can still find it. It works beautifully.
Adam
The real deal? (Score:3)
Holy sh*t! This could be the real deal... 100% legit DVD decoding on Linux! But...
Re:So what does that really mean ... (Score:2)
Re:DVD?!!!!! (Score:5)
ATi has never claimed their video cards have on-board DVD decoders. What they claim is "DVD Acceleration".
What they mean by that is that there are special features of their video board that make typical mpeg2 display measurably quicker than it would be if you did not use those features.
Specifically, it has exactly what nearly every video card manufactured since 1994 has.
First, it has a bi-linear scaler so it can scale the size of the movie window in a whole two directions. Usually width and height.
Second, it has a pallete-dac that allows your software mpeg2 decoder to write YUV data to the framebuffer and have the video card convert it to RGB on the fly. This is nice, because most compressed video streams are YUV internally, and your monitor is unrelentingly RGB.
Now, these are nice things to have around, I don't deny that at all. But they do not a DVD decoder make.
Think of it like those BASF commercials - "We don't decode your DVD, we just make it better"
This settles it (almost) (Score:3)
I have been a staunch supporter of nvidia for some time now but while companies like ATI and 3dfx have made firm commitments and provided resource after resource to the opensource community, nvidia hides behind waiting for XFree 4.0. With the news yesterday that 4.0 will be out in March, I will give nvidia until a short time past to follow through on thier commitment. If I can't see any measurable results, I will move over to ATI. Am I being unfair here?
The other side of the coin (Score:2)
Of course the reality is that ATI has limited market share at best, and Sigma has even less. But we've gone from 0% market penitration to 5-10%. My fear is that the case will go on so long that the MPAA is going to seriously twist reality on this. (Not that they haven't already) It will no longer be about lawful reverse engineering.
Some thoughts.... (Score:5)
BUT
I think it is time to realise that the times when a companies decision to support Linux was driven by some "higher" goal is starting to end.
Linux is becoming a stratetgic platform, companies are realising that getting into the Linux market will be crucial, and it will start returning a profit in the (not to distant) future.
Especially ATI has shown in the past that it does not believe in open support for its product (yes there have been some changes, but only fairly recently).
It seems that there will be a market for a Linux DVD SW player, as countless posts on
We all know the problems most commercial drivers have, when it comes to rapidly changing kernel releases, SMP, etc.
Secondly it would tie anyone who wants to watch DVD on Linux to ATI.
Thirdly, a working closed source solution might kill (or dampen) any effort to get a more open solution, as commercial partners (which seem to be necessary, given the DVD NDA constraints, etc) might fear that the market is already occupied by ATI.
Overall I believe that ATI is mainly doing a very clever strategic move, which might end up doing more harm than good to Linux as a multimedia platform.
I still hope some company will produce a CARD INDEPENDANT DVD player app, probabely with an open interface, to enable graphics card vendors to add card specific support (not absolutely necessary, as with modern processors MPEG-2 decoding can be done entirely in SW).
IMHO this would be more helpful than any graphics card dependant solution.
And lastly let's not forget that ATI only announced the SDK, I haven't heard any product announcements yet....
Just my $0.02
Frank
Re:ATI VHA (Score:2)
I don't understand. If this driver doesn't contain anything CSS-related (the DVD player developer would supply that part), then why can't it be source? They can just as easily compile/link your hardware driver into their app. Just release it under a BSD-style license instead of GPL, so that they don't have to release their player's source.
That would keep CSS encryption just as protected and secret as it is right now. *smirk*
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Unfair? (Score:1)
Re:DVD?!!!!! (Score:2)
Apps made w/ ViaVocie SDK (Kinda Off-Topic) (Score:3)
For apps based on ViaVoice SDK try
Xvoice - Dictation in X
http://www.compapp.dcu.ie/~tdoris/Xvoice/
GVoice - Voice Commands for Gnome
http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~omega/gnome/gvoice/
KVoiceControl - Voice Comands for KDE
http://www.kiecza.de/daniel/kde/index.html
ATI's Quality (Score:1)
They don't look after their older customers. I noticed that this new stuff works with the Rage 128 and Rage 128 Pro... what about those of us using Rage Pro's? Instead of updating their drivers they just release a new card... which makes it very expencive for me. Free vs. paying the upgrade cost or buying a new $300(cdn) card.
I also have 8mb of vram and apparently it isn't enough for their tv card to operate normally at 1600x1200x16bit. I either have to drop down 1-2 resolutions or watch the little boxes slide across the screen.
My next 3d card will deffinatly be something along the lines of an nVidia chip or something... not an ATI.
Re:Interesting timing (Score:1)
Well, I have a little advice...Go with the ATI!
Just because the decryption is a binary, I don't think that "sells you out" to the OSS community. The way I see it is that in some cases such as this, sending the decryption in a binary is ok as long as the decryption is the only thing in the binary. It is just a tool that you use to decode the data, but you can use it whichever way you wish!
Re:Wow.. it just keeps getting better (Score:1)
Just a link to a "built in" decoding key for their hardware so that software can be written for their hardware... [a key based on a licence they may have already had for the windows platform, or was purchaced for "unlimited" linux versions]...
--
Amarillo Linux Users Group [alug.org]
Re:Unfair? (Score:2)
LinuxPPC (Score:2)
As for everyone sayign that this weakens the deCSS case, I might agree, but there are still very strong arguments to be made - everyone who is not running a Rage 128 card under Linux.
How about for PPC? (Score:1)
My new iMac has a rage 128 and I would LOVE to do
some more development with it.
Changing track record (à la Creaitve Labs)? (Score:1)
However, I think I'll wait until I see results from ATI before buying their cards... I really like Matrox, and it seems to work better under Linux than ATI, nVidia, or 3dfx (correct me if I'm wrong!)
Re:Unfair? (Score:2)
One word: GREED!
I am willing to bet that ATI must pay a pretty penny to the MPAA in order to write this stuff. Besides, they are 'licensed'. I would be willing to bet that even though this software is free, ATI must pay a royalty to the MPAA for each and every DVD capable video card they ship. That is also why you will never see any 3rd party software that is open source that will allow you to play a DVD regardless of the video card. (Ahm, DeCSS, cough) The game works like this:
They make to movies. They sell the DVDs for a reasonable price to the consumer. The carge the manufacturer a 'per unit' royalty to be a 'licensed' DVD player manufacturer. They charge a 'per unit' royalty for every piece of commercial software that is used to play dvd movies. And there you have it, "Mo money, Mo money, Mo money!".
For everyone that uses DVD, they pay the MPAA in 3 ways: 1, the disk; 2, the player; and 3, the decoder (software).
Mpeg-2... very interesting... (Score:3)
But now ATI comes out with this same information... this is great. Hopefully others will follow. The whole thing just smacks of strong-arming by the DVD industry.
(See the "Question about MPEG playback on HW" thread on the video4linux archives - if you can find them. Red Hat - you host this list, why don't you archive it?)
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Nice...except ATi's not the first one to do this.. (Score:4)
CSS is handled legally by the drivers - they just call the ZivaDS (the descrambler chip) and say "unlock the drive, unlock the title, decode the data". The driver code has no knowledge of CSS secrets - they're all contained within the hardware.
Right now, the support is good - VGA overlay is working for the most part, and IFO parsing (with the exception of selecting multiple camera angles) is done, so movies like The Matrix and Tomorrow Never Dies play correctly. Chapter searching works to a certain extent as well. There's a graphical frontend (gdxr2) available.
Unfortunately, there's no support yet for Creative's newest card, the DxR3 - it has some functions in software, which have not been released by Sigma (who manufactures the decoder hardware). Maybe ATi's release of binaries for the restricted materials will spur them along...
Re:Some thoughts.... (Score:2)
Re:Some thoughts.... (Score:2)
As long as it provides more tools to expand what I can do on Linux do I really care how greedy a company is? They might not be pure at heart but at least its something.
>Secondly it would tie anyone who wants to watch DVD on Linux to ATI.
I would think it would encourage companies to do the same thing to _compete_ with ATI. "Our product is better and faster than any other" sort of idea. Some company has to be the first.
>Thirdly, a working closed source solution might kill (or dampen) any effort to get a more open solution,
But this solution only works with ATI hardware. There will still be a need for those who don't have an ATI. Thats going to be a huge demand when people see what is possible with an ATI/Linux combo
>lastly let's not forget that ATI only announced the SDK
Again, its better than nothing.
Re:Mpeg-2... very interesting... (Score:1)
Found. [theaimsgroup.com] Interesting.
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Oops, I'm an idiot. (Score:2)
Although the sample code will be released open source, the MPEG-2 driver will be released in binary format in order to maintain DVD security.
Since WHEN does MPEG-2 playback have anything to do with "DVD security?" Argh. The DVD Cartel must have some pretty big goons that they send around to their license holders....
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Travelmate... argh (Score:1)
Re:DVD?!!!!! (Score:3)
BUT, the "special feature" of ATI cards are leaps and bounds better than the "special features" on the other guys like nVidia and S3 (ATI's 1997 cards can accelerate DVD playback better than the newest nVidia cards, for example)
YUV, bi-li scaling and so forth have been available to most video cards since 1994, granted. However what REALLY matter is Motion Compensation and Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform (IDCT), combining to about 60 - 70% of the actual decoding.
ATI cards have had Motion Compensation since 1997 IIRC, and newer cards from S3 are now *STARTING* to implement this feature. IDCT, that provides an even more dramatic acceleration, have been available since the Rage 128. And as of now, the only non-ATI chip that also has it is one from SiS and nobody else.
Well, if you have ~1Ghz processors of course all of them don't matter unless you are running 10's of apps at the same time.
Re:Very cool! (Score:1)
Do you know what is meant by "XFCom"? The SuSE released driver has XFCom appended to its name. This means that the driver is binary only, but that the X developers have the source. The source code for an XFCom driver is always ncluded in the next version of the official X distro which inludes the driver. XFree86-3.3.6 includes the r128 driver in the svga server and also has source. I specifically am not flaming you, but please think before you post! Check what XFCom means - then you would know not to ask such questions.
As to your other comments, I completely agree - it is cool. I have an ATI AIW 128 16Mb AGP card too, so I know
Cheers,
Jonathan.
Re:So the real question is... (Score:1)
It has been previously mentioned that many computer-based DVD solutions do not even enforce zones, it is just not publicitized, and of course a number of dedicated DVD players can be hacked so as not to enforce zones.
Re:Yay (Score:1)
XFree86-3.3.6. The SVGA driver now supports
Rage128 (it's using the code from SUSE).
I am running all of this on RedHat 6.0 with no problems in 1280x1024.
Confusion... (Score:3)
Most of the modern video cards on the market can convert from YUV --> RGB on the fly. This is fairly significant, because to do this in software is about 25% of the decoding process on a software DVD player. As far as I know, the only video card(s) out there that support this under Linux are the Matrox G200/G400/G400MAX cards, using the mga_vid kernel module.
There are a few cards on the market that support what is called 'motion compensation', which eases CPU usage by significant amount, also. ATi cards have, in addition to motion compensation, what is called iDCT (Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform) - which eases CPU usage by an additional 5-10%.
These features are not the same as what MPEG-2 decoders do - they do nearly all the work onboard the card, themselves, except a few things, like CSS. Sigma Designs has designed a chip that does CSS in hardware, so we might start seeing hardware decoders from them in the near future for Linux. In the meantime, the best cards to have for Linux are from Matrox. (The G400MAX SGRAM card is the best, actually, for X speed and DVD). Feel free to read the DVD Playing HOWTO [helo.org] for more information. Additionally, README.MGA in the X documentation talks a bit about these cards - "Makes extensive use of the graphics accelerator. This server is very well accelerated, and is one of the fastest XFree86 X servers." Because Matrox has released the specs for the cards, things are coming along real well for it (like Utah-GLX, etc.) Check the cards out!
"Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill."
Re:ATI VHA (Score:2)
An alternative would be to release the source code to the library under the LGPL, rather than the GPL. This would also allow third-parties to link the library into closed-source applications, while making the library code open-source.
Re:Oops, I'm an idiot. (Score:1)
But you're right, it's a dumb reason.
Re:Yay (Score:1)
Actually... (Score:2)
ATI Registered Developer Program (Score:2)
ATI Developer Registration [ati.com]
-partap
Re:The other side of the coin (Score:1)
It shouldn't hurt it. The drivers for ATI and Sigma hardware doesn't mean jack to those without that hardware. If we let them win because of this point, we won't win anything for consumer rights. I want the ability to watch DVDs whenever I want on whatever OS and hardware I want.
Re:The other side of the coin (Score:1)
Re:How about TV OUT on the XPERT@PLAY 98 (Score:1)
Re:ATI vs Matrox for video (Score:1)
However, the playback for DVD and TV Tuner was very fuzzy compared to my STB TV PCI tuner and Creative Labs Dxr2 DVD decoder. (I was trying to merge everything into a single card and save some slots.) The feature set was terrific. But the playback was fuzzy and there was some sort of smearing effect at the bottom of the screen. I played "Star Wars: Special Edition" through my STB card and the AIW 128 simultaneously from the same VCR and put the windows next to each other, and there was simply no competition. According to ATI, the TV feed and DVD both use the same decoding chip (which is why the same problem existed for both of them).
Before you assume that the AIW is a bad card, though, I also tried the 3dfx Voodoo3 3500 TV, which is a tuner but no DVD. I had the same problem with the TV feed. This is especially strange since 3dfx bought STF last year, so I would expect that if my old STB card worked, that a new STB-related card would be better, not worse. I don't know if it was my system, a fluke, the fact that they were combo cards, or what.
I've not used the Matrox Marvel G400-TV, so I can't say. My last Matrox card was the original 2MB Millennium, which is still chugging along in my P/166 after 4 years. I would have tried the Marvel had I had the time and money, and could find a store near me that carried it and had a good return policy. :-) (God bless MicroCenter's 30-day no-questions-asked policy.) I believe XFree86 does support the G400 chipset now.
My best advice would be to try one and see if you like it. But make very sure you buy the card from a store locally that has a full-refund policy if you don't like it. (In fact, that goes for everything you buy. Are you listening, CompUSA?)
Re:Very cool! (Score:1)
Cheers,
nick
--
GroundAndPound.com [groundandpound.com] News and info for martial artists of all styles.
Offtopic: What's the best 3D card for LINUX? (Score:1)
With the XFree86 4.0 coming out soon, i'm planning to upgrade my ATI 3dPro chip (All-in-Wonder) with some kewl 3d card.
What card is the best right now (for LINUX) to play Loki games, Q2/Q3, Unreal, etc?
Is it TNT2/ Voodoo 3000/ Matrox G400Max?
Which one?
Stupid Sloppy (Score:1)
Er, forget what I said about Rainbow Runner; that isn't an MPEG accellerator anyway. So if they were to release a RR driver that sped up MPEG playback, I would be quite suspicious. ;-)
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Re:The other side of the coin (Score:2)
First of all, this software is tied to a specific hardware product, so it's of no use to people with other video cards. If lawyers can justify restricting CSS by saying, "Just buy an ATI card!" then they could also do the same thing by saying, "Just buy Windoze!" That won't work.
And secondly, there's always *BSD, BeOS, OS/2, Amiga, HURD, QNX, and many others. The world isn't just divided up between 'Doze, Mac, and Linux. (Thank goodness!) Other platforms still need DeCSS-like programs for any chance of watching DVDs.
And thirdly, this dev kit doesn't decode CSS anyway. It's just a tool that would be used by someone who makes a DVD player (which would include CSS decoding).
None of this threatens your right to use or distribute DeCSS and similar tools. None of it ever will.
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