[Cbe-oss-dev] Will Linux for the PS3 ever progress far enough to be able to play HD movies?

[John Lange]

On Wed, 2009-05-27 at 00:25 +1000, Jonathan Adamczewski wrote:
> John Lange wrote:
> > On Tue, 2009-05-26 at 11:23 +0200, Hector Oron wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> Haven't you tried spu-medialib, libps3fb, mplayer-ps3 ?
> > 
> > The original post might have sounded a bit like flamebait but it's
> > actually a good question. What is the status of (HD) video on the PS3?
> > 
> > The projects you mention above all will not do h.264 which is the
> > defacto standard for HD video.
> 
> mplayer does support h.264.

mplayer does, mplayer-ps3 apparently does not. From the Ubuntu-ps3 page:

mplayer-ps3

Known issues: 
      * Do not run X when running this.
      * H.264 / MKV does not work.

> Greater access to the RSX would not solve this problem immediately,
> and is not a necessity to do so.

I don't pretend to be an expert on this issue. All I know is that every
linux machine I've ever used that didn't have driver support for the
video hardware falls back to the frame buffer and is the result is a
display that is so slow it's unusable.

I'm also of the understanding that it is the video drivers and hardware
which optimize the display of video.

All of those things seem to indicate that proper support for the video
hardware would make an enormous difference in the usability of the PS3
for "desktop" applications.

-- 
John Lange
http://www.johnlange.ca