us1111 Wrote:But actually I'm gonna withdraw from this conversation.. Don't like the "non-constructive mode" of Ashlar..
Don't leave...it's refreshing to see someone else picking the good fight.
My 2 cents to Ashlar...simply because you don't like HW acceleration, it does not mean others do not have very good reasons for liking it.
Want a good reason? The environment.
The user in question has said that GPU acceleration would enable him to keep 3 machines in use. That's 3 machines not ending up in a landfill in China where they leach toxic chemicals into kid's drinking water.
As for myself, I'm currently in the process of creating the lowest energy consumption integrated Home Theater system (for real world release). For audio playback, I've hit on XBMC with an Iphone/N800 remote for music playback without a screen. As for video, I'm not through with my calculations, but I predict that GPU acceleration could save 15 watts idle power and 60 watts during playback.
The math is simple and it does lead to GPU acceleration. Beyond energy savings for mainstream systems, a cheaper processor could mean a cheaper motherboard which could mean a more affordable low energy unit which could mean more people saving power.
I strongly encourage XBMC developers to consider a higher principle than 'cross platform development' when considering GPU acceleration. While software decoding is more versatile, the reality is that focusing on doing a few formats (mkv w/ h.264) better (great GUI + gpu acceleration) would serve more people. Of course, that argument is moot considering that it's not either/or...software decode can certainly live alongside gpu acceleration.
Of course, the big trump card here is Open CL. Considering the state of Plex and Apple's own implementation of Open CL, it looks like XBMC on Linux/Windows will yield the performance and innovation crown to Plex/Apple quite soon. That's a pity as Apple is clearly not concerned enough about low power consumption - and I don't like Apple's closed ecosystem.