Some notes on Linux and free drivers

Some notes on Linux and free drivers

Posted Apr 20, 2006 18:12 UTC (Thu) by ehovland (subscriber, #2284)
Parent article: Some notes on Linux and free drivers

I have bought nVidia chipset based graphics cards for the last 6 computers I have bought for my own use. And the last 10 computers I have had some influence with at work. Why? Because in general they have Just Worked.

But, my biggest gripe with both nVidia and ATI is that there is a portion of technology on their cards that I have a love hate relationship with - Motion Compensation support through XvMC. I use MythTV like I have no sense, with three MythTV boxen at home. And more to follow probably. It is like an addiction with this stuff. There isn't a room in the house I don't want to watch something on these days. My TV and netflix consumption has double since I got into MythTV. And for some darn reason every show I want to watch is on at the same darn time (must have 4 tuners). Now XvMC ought to make my watching more enjoyable and lower the per unit cost since I can offload this stuff to the already required graphics card. But the driver support goes back and forth every version with nVidia and ATI just plain doesn't support it.

In these niche markets, nVidia would save a whopping pile of money if they released the drivers. And since the IP that goes into them has been stale since about 2003, they are not loosing any market share. They might even get a leg up on XviD support in hardware. But alas, they continue to put out releases that either break or improve XvMC, causing me to laugh or cry.

Oh well.

---

(Log in to post comments)