[Luke Skytripper]

This is a crazy thread: everybody likes evolution of codecs. Only Davilla prefers locking his code in closed source drivers for his personal gain above new codecs to benefit all.

Are you insane? Davilla supports open source more than anyone I know! If you want someone doing closed source for personal gain look to elan.

[tential]

You have to look at why he's ripping on h.265.

If I worked for a company that sold ARM boxes then I probably wouldn't want people thinking about H.265 either. Someone thinking about next-gen codecs is more likely to build an upgradeable x86 machine and less likely to buy one of my underpowered ARM box. Heck, these toys can barely manage current formats..

H.265 is a planned codec. There are ARM SoCs on the market today that can decode H.265. I don't think you even know what you're talking about. Someone in the market of selling ARM boxes has nothing to worry about when it comes to H.265. Cheese and crackers, man, where you do get this BS from?

Instead of stopping to at least consider what he literally said, you'd rather draw unfounded conclusions because of his employer. People like you are the cancer that slows open source from spreading into commercial markets. The moment someone isn't doing something for free, they're suddenly evil? Get real.

Funny thing is, I've already said at least 5 times in this thread that ARM SoCs are capable of decoding H.265.

I'm wondering if there will be any vast improvements of the encoder, or if it will simply just mean we have to wait until intel/amd release more advanced cpus. Because from the way it looks with intel, they don't care at all about increasing performance.

The increase from Sandybridge, to Ivybridge, to Haswell has been meh. Going to need more than that to handle encoding.

[wsnipex]

thats plainly wrong. intel does encoding in hardware already(quick sync), which is way faster then anything else in consumer grade hardware.

[mayoman]

Aaaaarrrrggggghhhhh! I hate it when threads go like this.
Behind all the heat I think some important points are being made, namely, that while the content providers & hardware manufacturers are likely to be hot for x265, it is still some time belore devs need be overly concerned about it. Likewise for dumb schmucks like me thinking of buying hardware today, x265 capability should be ranked a bit below having a handy USB socket at the front, i.e. nice to have but not worth spending money on as the device is likely to be old and obsolete by the time there is much x265 content out there (& possibly then still not able to handle a lot of it).

[aptalca]

this is just the industry wanting to cash in on you buying new hw to play back bitrate raped streams they sell to naive joe as hd. where the real snr is hidden beneath tons of psychovisual tricks.

I know, totally!! That's why I encode everything in mpeg-1 and burn onto video cds. I refuse to be a naive joe and buy a dvd or bluray player, let alone an htpc :-P

h.265 killed JFK. There, I said it. We were all thinking it, and someone had to say it.

And Lincoln, too!

All jokes aside, I kinda agree with spiff here (although his response comes off as too generalized)

In my opinion, there was a big difference in quality going from SD (even progressive NTSC) to 720p and 1080p. h/x264 made that possible.

But going from 1080p to 4K is not very significant for in home use. I bet most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference due to limited screen size (Maybe for a projector it would make sense, but I am just about to buy my first 1080p projector, so I wouldn't expect to be able to afford a 4K one for about 10 years :-). Therefore h/x265 and 4K are not going to be a necessity for most people. All x265 will do is cut down on the file size a bit, which is cool, but not enough to get me real excited.

[tential]

All x265 will do is cut down on the file size a bit, which is cool, but not enough to get me real excited.

I wouldn't consider 50% to be "a bit".

This is 45-55%, and some further optimizations to cut down file size have not yet been implemented. For me at least, with 10 TB of storage (paltry to many users on here), that means a lot. I had plans to upgrade to 16TB-20TB. If this goes mainstream in the next 2 years though, I don't need that upgrade anymore. I can put that money towards better uses.

[magao]

thats plainly wrong. intel does encoding in hardware already(quick sync), which is way faster then anything else in consumer grade hardware.

Yes, but also considerably reduced quality compared to x264 on even fairly low settings. I tried using QuickSync for my Blu-Ray encodes and not only was the quality poor but the file size was large. I'd rather spend 8 hours encoding using x264 CRF 20 than 1.5 hours using QuickSync.

[tential]

thats plainly wrong. intel does encoding in hardware already(quick sync), which is way faster then anything else in consumer grade hardware.

Yes, but also considerably reduced quality compared to x264 on even fairly low settings. I tried using QuickSync for my Blu-Ray encodes and not only was the quality poor but the file size was large. I'd rather spend 8 hours encoding using x264 CRF 20 than 1.5 hours using QuickSync.

This is very true. QuickSync has shown reduced quality. I wouldn't say considerably, but I also need glasses. Up to the user to tell.

[natethomas]

Funny thing is, I've already said at least 5 times in this thread that ARM SoCs are capable of decoding H.265.

Sorry, what? Where does this information come from? And which ARM SoCs? My understanding was that H.265 would not be supported by either Apple TV that XBMC runs on, the NVIDIA ION platform, or any currently existing ARM hardware. That's at least half our userbase right there. Is there a source out there that disputes some of that?

[Platypus2]

For me at least, with 10 TB of storage (paltry to many users on here), that means a lot. I had plans to upgrade to 16TB-20TB. If this goes mainstream in the next 2 years though, I don't need that upgrade anymore. I can put that money towards better uses.

I'm a bit confused, are you saying that you will change 10tb of h.264 or any other format into h.265 to save on 4tb?

Isn't that in itself going to take a long amount time / unnecessary processing power? 4tb disks are starting to appear now, is the amount of time it takes to go over to h.265 worth it for one disk? In 2-4 years who knows we might even start to see 8tb disks or even bigger?

I like the sound of h.265 and when it becomes the new 'h.264' with the same support the smaller file size will be great but I can't even begin to think about switching everything over to it for the sake of one disk.

Am I missing something or wouldnt 10tb to h.265 take weeks maybe months to complete just to save on a hard disk. I suppose if you have the spare processing power?

[Ned Scott]

Funny thing is, I've already said at least 5 times in this thread that ARM SoCs are capable of decoding H.265.

Sorry, what? Where does this information come from? And which ARM SoCs? My understanding was that H.265 would not be supported by either Apple TV that XBMC runs on, the NVIDIA ION platform, or any currently existing ARM hardware. That's at least half our userbase right there. Is there a source out there that disputes some of that?

As far as what's shipping right now, Samsung Galaxy S4 has it. Someone even posted a link to a set-top-box that will have it, but I can't seem to find the link.

Everyone in this thread seems to understands that this doesn't mean XBMC will have it in the near future. x265 has to get to a point to be included in ffmpeg, then that version of ffmpeg must get included in XBMC. We're just noticing the bleeding edge that is trickling in :)

[magao]

thats plainly wrong. intel does encoding in hardware already(quick sync), which is way faster then anything else in consumer grade hardware.

Yes, but also considerably reduced quality compared to x264 on even fairly low settings. I tried using QuickSync for my Blu-Ray encodes and not only was the quality poor but the file size was large. I'd rather spend 8 hours encoding using x264 CRF 20 than 1.5 hours using QuickSync.

This is very true. QuickSync has shown reduced quality. I wouldn't say considerably, but I also need glasses. Up to the user to tell.

I don't need glasses, my brother does. The difference was readily apparent to both myself and my brother (my brother was doing a blind test, I wasn't). The biggest complaint we had was that the colours felt slightly washed out and the entire image was blurry - his comment was that it felt more like a high-quality upscale from DVD than an encode from Blu-Ray.

This was using the highest-quality settings for QuickSync that Handbrake would let me use vs my normal CRF 20 x264 encode.

[tential]

Yes, but also considerably reduced quality compared to x264 on even fairly low settings. I tried using QuickSync for my Blu-Ray encodes and not only was the quality poor but the file size was large. I'd rather spend 8 hours encoding using x264 CRF 20 than 1.5 hours using QuickSync.

This is very true. QuickSync has shown reduced quality. I wouldn't say considerably, but I also need glasses. Up to the user to tell.

I don't need glasses, my brother does. The difference was readily apparent to both myself and my brother (my brother was doing a blind test, I wasn't). The biggest complaint we had was that the colours felt slightly washed out and the entire image was blurry - his comment was that it felt more like a high-quality upscale from DVD than an encode from Blu-Ray.

This was using the highest-quality settings for QuickSync that Handbrake would let me use vs my normal CRF 20 x264 encode.

Ya, after reading the anandtech review on this, and seeing the QuickSync stuff, I decided I wouldn't use it. I am curious though as to whether x265 encodes will see speed increases on Haswell, or whether we'll need intel to release a whole new much faster CPU to handle encodes.

From Intel's recent releases CPU wise, (Sandybridge to Ivybridge to Haswell), It seems like they are interested in only the mobile platform, and desktop is an afterthought. It doesn't feel like we'll be getting quick x265 encodes soon, but who knows what intel has up their sleeves.

[Piers]

Well, this thread went from good reading to turd with lightning speed... also davilla is a nice guy, I remember interviewing him for a blog a few years ago when I knew nothing about XBMC, he kindly took the time to explain everything in great detail.

Anyway, I think x265 could be useful for certain applications, mostly streaming content where bandwidth is an issue. I don't see me using it for backups unless I get a 4K screen, which is very unlikely for a long time. I'm happy with x264, the profiles and resulting quality. Plus hard drives aren't expensive (£75 for 3TB).

[DJ_Izumi]

Anyway, I think x265 could be useful for certain applications, mostly streaming content where bandwidth is an issue. I don't see me using it for backups unless I get a 4K screen, which is very unlikely for a long time. I'm happy with x264, the profiles and resulting quality. Plus hard drives aren't expensive (£75 for 3TB).

Not to be a snot, but this is what everyone was basically saying when DivX/XviD were looking to be supplanted by h.264. h.265/HEVC will come as a natural evolution, it'll get hardware and software support, it'll save bandwidth/storage and/or allow higher resolution in the same bandwidth/storage and at some point we'll wonder how we ever managed with 'icky h.264'.