Thought it'd be a good time for a tech article for a change, what with
Broadcom being unusually free software friendly. Their track record with that is not very good at least with their WLAN and GPS chips, you see, people generally having to
reverse-engineer drivers for their stuff if they want to use it in a free system.
But now, it seems that
Crimbo spirit has overcome at least the Broadcom Media PC Group. With co-operation from the
XBMC media center project and the GNU/Linux distributor
Red Hat, Broadcom
has published Linux drivers for their Crystal HD video decoder chips under the GPL (kernel driver) and LGPL (library and application code). The chip can decode the most relevant mainstream video formats — MPEG-2, H.264 and VC-1 — in full HD, and quite a bit more efficiently than a general purpose processor. This makes Crystal HD attractive for use especially in small media center PCs as well as portable computers, where you can't or don't want to have the fastest possible main processor because of power consumption, cooling and price concerns.
Of course, this does not necessarily imply that Broadcom in general is becoming more open — big companies do tend to have different policies in different branches, pretty much on a boss-by-boss as well as a case-by-case basis. Still, the contribution is real, and especially tangible given that the only well-working option for accelerated video playback on GNU/Linux thus far has been Nvidia's VDPAU — requiring both an Nvidia graphics card and their proprietary drivers.
This release is a complete gamechanger in the GNU/Linux HD media playback market. The Crystal HD doesn't care what graphics chip you have in your computer, so if you so desire, you can take your business to Intel or ATI/AMD — both more supportive of free software drivers than Nvidia, but behind on the video acceleration front — or whoever. No longer is the choice between a high-powered computer or a low-powered computer with an Nvidia card with its proprietary driver; you can just pick almost any low-end box you like as long as it has a suitable card slot available.
As for the costs, apparently there are mini-PCI-e cards
on eBay starting at ~$22, which is next to nothing when you consider that the rest of the PC can then be quite a bit less powerful and still be able to run your videos. Only mini-PCI-e versions are available at this time, suitable for some small form factor desktops (often preferred for media center PCs) and laptops. Any such slot especially in a laptop may already contain say, a Wifi card, though, which you often don't really want to remove. ExpressCard (suitable for many laptops without the above caveat nor the need to open the case for installation) and full-sized PCI-e (suitable for common desktop PCs) versions are on their way.
Now, having hyped this thing to high heaven, as a free software advocate I'll have to mention a slight blemish on the release as well. The Crystal HD firmware (the software running on the decoder chip itself) will remain non-free. This is hardly a surprise; proprietary firmware is common across all kinds of devices even when the manufacturers provide free drivers and/or technical information to driver writers. I mostly just mention this not to lull people into thinking that the release is some sort of panacea; it's not. But it is as good as things usually get in these times, which is not too shabby.
As another obligatory side complaint, the video formats in question are patent-encumbered in large parts of the world, and thus under the control of media patent holder cartels. Fact remains, however, that almost all HD video and a huge portion of the lesser stuff is and will be in these formats for the foreseeable future, and being able to watch some of it is a good thing.
One does still hope that the technically worse but free
Theora gains some ground at least in the web video scene. Some steps towards it have been taken; Theora is out of the box supported on at least
Mozilla Firefox (3.5 and up), has at least experimental branch support in
Opera, and though it's unclear to me at this point, it seemed like the
Google Chrome browser was getting support as well.
Of course, companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Nokia are not likely to support any technologies that would give smaller competitors a level playing field; a free market is something these players loathe. As a workaround, there is a Java player and possibility of a future Flash player to leverage Theora also on less co-operative browsers, which would be important for wider website adoption. As far as they go, at least some noncommercial efforts such as
Wikimedia Commons use Theora precisely due to its freedom, and for your vlogging needs eg.
blip.tv will deal in Theora as well as other formats.
Yes, I got sidetracked there for a moment; seems I can't very well write about video formats without lamenting the current cartels having control of much of our multimedia infrastructure. Regardless, Broadcom's product does crack open some doors that were once closed to free software, even if it doesn't quite go ahead and blow said doors off from their hinges. Kudos to them for that much, at least.
