Reimar Grabowski wrote:
On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 18:21:14 +0000
Mark Morgan Lloyd <[email protected]> wrote:
With the major caveat that the interfaces used for playing video and for
program-generated graphics are distinct (hardware MPEG decompression in
one case, OpenGL in the other) and having one work implies nothing about
the other.
"Implies nothing" is a little too strong for my liking.
At the risk of getting off-topic, my intent was to indicate that just
because a machine can play a DVD doesn't mean it can play the same
content from a file, and just because it can play content from a DVD or
file doesn't mean that it has sufficient OpenGL support to support
something like Google Earth. And the ultimate test of a system is being
able to handle something like BBC audiovisual content or YouTube
properly, both of which (at least until recently) made a lot of
assumptions about a Flash player which itself made a lot of assumptions
about the robustness of OpenGL's hardware acceleration.
Now in general, things like video content aren't a problem with recent
PC hardware and a recent version of Windows or Linux. And they aren't
too much of a problem with something like ARM-based tablets provided
that the manufacturer has either stuck to a reference design or has
invested lots of money getting a custom player from Adobe. But for older
kit (e.g. laptops with limited video RAM), or non-x86 systems (e.g.
SPARC with any version of Linux) or minority operating systems (e.g.
Solaris, unless you can afford to pay protection money to Oracle) all
bets are off: the fact that one type of video works implies nothing
about whether other types work.
> IMHO being implemented in the same driver is a hint that they use
> similar mechanics.
But they aren't implemented in the same driver: video (i.e. mpeg
playback etc.) uses the standard X drivers while OpenGL uses kernel
drivers accessed via the DRI interface.
Fortunately, this sort of thing doesn't usually have a direct bearing on
the sort of apps that Lazarus is usually used for. Let's try to keep it
that way.
--
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk
[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]
--
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