Using HDMI Audio/Video On Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Using HDMI Audio/Video On Linux

The last time we looked in-depth at HDMI support on Linux was last December when talking about HDMI with the ATI Catalyst Linux driver. Since then there has been improvements in a number of drivers for different hardware. In this article we have a brief overview on the status of HDMI support in the Intel, NVIDIA, and ATI Linux drivers.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=13225

[bulletxt]

there are enough reasons to say that AMD/ATI users are masochists, and enough reasons to say that NVIDIA users are just smarter.

[DanL]

there are enough reasons to say that AMD/ATI users are masochists, and enough reasons to say that NVIDIA users are just smarter.

In your rush to be a fanboy, you must have missed this part of the article:

Support for using HDMI audio through NVIDIA graphics cards was added in the NVIDIA 177.xx driver series but some users are still experiencing problems with recent driver releases.

[deanjo]

In your rush to be a fanboy, you must have missed this part of the article:

If you would hop into the Alsa channel on IRC you would see that there are people having issues as well with ATI.

Like everything else, nothing works 100% all the time for everybody.

[DanL]

If you would hop into the Alsa channel on IRC you would see that there are people having issues as well with ATI.

I know that people are having issues with ATI as well; that wasn't my point. My point was that Nvidia users are having problems too and that nvidia users declaring themselves superior are fanboys (at best).

[bulletxt]

you are wrong, I'm an ATI user and have always been an ATI user. The only reason I use ATI cards is because they cost less.

so no, fanboy isn't a word that belongs to me. But what I know is that for 1 NVIDIA issue, there are 20 ATI issues. if you want to discuss about this then you'de better open your eyes and accept reality.

[The_Monkey_King]

From the Ars Technica link, you can see HDMI and audio are not quite perfect on the Windows side either.

To play protected audio has been a bit more difficult until very recently, as no current video or sound card (no matter which hardware it has) supports the Protected Audio Path needed to get compressed multichannel audio (Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA) from your Blu-ray to your speakers via HDMI. The fix, as Anandtech and others discovered, is to let your HTPC decompress the multichannel audio, and send it over HDMI as uncompressed 8-channel LPCM. The hangup then became that hardware did not incorporate enough bandwidth to accommodate uncompressed 8-channel audio over HDMI, or if it did, the drivers or something else didn't work.

Redemption (or at least a workable fix) finally arrived in summer, 2008. AMD's Radeon HD 4000-series graphics cards, NVIDIA's GeForce 8200/8300 chipset, and Intel's G45 chipset all support 8-channel LPCM and actually work. Technically, Intel's G965 and G35 chipsets also support 8-channel LPCM, but the drivers never made it a pleasant experience.

At times I've been both ATI's worst critic and their biggest supporter. I've been sorely disappointed by the 690G on-board chipset and lowered expectations for their 790GX. Right now all my testing has been suspended with all versions of Linux as my arena is strictly HTPC. Until I can drop in a DVD and have it play tear free in 1920x1080, all my testing is blocked.

I'd hoped for this at Christmas last year and once again I am hoping for another Christmas miracle. But I won't be crushed this time.

[NeoBrain]

Is there a way to disable ATI HDMI? I got 3 devices in phonon, one for pulseaudio, one for my real sound card and one for ATI HDMI... The first one isn't used, the second sometimes dies and it's going a bit on my nerves to see phonon fall back to an unused (and thus non-functional) ATI HDMI port...

[BlueKoala]

Hah, I played around with HDMI audio so much, the only thing I haven't tried is create my own driver. I figured my cable was not working.

[Schugy]

I'm an AMD fanboy and I really like the hardware. But without free drivers that support 2D/3D/Video acceleration and sound the best hardware is simply useless.