Sunday, November 15, 2009

Broadcom Hardware Decoder added

And it rocks! CPU consumption is now down to 10-20% for 720P and 15-30% for 1080P.
It is called Broadcom BCM970012 or BCM70012 aslo known as Broadcom Crystal HD and so far it has accelerated all the H264 videos I have thrown at it. However, even though the CPU load is very low even for 1080P, it sometimes stutters a bit. I suspect this might be because the GMA950 GPU is having trouble keeping up with 1080P. I have experimented a bit with different renderers (Haali, VMR9, EVR etc.) but haven't quite found the perfect match. Fortunately I don't really need to be able to play 1080P at the moment. But it would be nice to get it working though.

I bought it on ebay for 20$ (~100 DKK). It is about the size of half a Visa card and it is very easy to install. You slip it in, and install the drivers from the HP Mini 110, then you add a new external filter in MPC HC called Broadcom Decoder, move it up the priority list and that is it.
It also works in MediaPortal built in player.