AMD: Intel and Nvidia Hardware Play Blu-Ray Streams as Slideshows

Advanced Micro Devices claims that Intel and Nvidia cannot currently provide viable HD technologies for Blu-Ray movie playbacks. According to the company, the two chip manufacturers are not ready to deliver integrated graphics solutions able to hardware decode a high-definition stream.

AMD also claims that Nvidia and Intel graphics can only play movies back as slideshows because they lack hardware-decoding capabilities. For instance, a recent demonstration illustrated the "wheel of fortune" effect of playing DVDs on Nvidia or Intel integrated graphics.

The chip manufacturer said that the "wheel of fortune" effect refers to the fact that each time the users buy a Blu-Ray movie, there is a chance that the video had been compressed with an unsupported codec. If the video stream has been compressed using the VC-1 codec, then it won't render at decent speeds on such systems.

However, AMD claims that its integrated graphics chipsets are the only offerings on the market that can perform GPU-based decoding of VC-1 streams. Intel and Nvidia chipsets will send the decoding task to the main CPU, which would result in increased workloads. This means that the CPU resources would be allocated to decoding tasks, rather than to handle other software running on the machine.

The news was broken during a technology show in Singapore where the company demonstrated the differences between a Radeon-equipped PC and a generic machine powered by an Intel or Nvidia chipset. The test unveiled that the AMD solution is able to play a VC-1 encoded DVD at normal frame rates, while Intel and Nvidia core logic reached a measly one frame per second.

Users can encounter problems while playing back a Blu-Ray disc on such chipsets, as the encoding standard is not specified on the DVD / Blu-Ray jewel case.

The VC-1 codec has been developed by Microsoft for its Xbox360 game console. AMD has a great advantage over other competitors, as its ATI graphics division designed the Xbox360 graphics processor then ported the technology to its PC graphics products.


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