GPU-accelerated 720p Flash video gets demoed on a netbook (smoothly)

It's been a long wait since NVIDIA and Adobe announced their plans for GPU-accelerated Flash video back in January of this year, but it looks like the pair now finally have something to show for themselves. While it's not quite clear how official it is just yet, the folks at NotebookJournal have nonetheless published a video that shows 720p Flash video running smoothly on a netbook (an ION-powered HP Mini 311, to be specific). Unfortunately, it looks like we'll still have to wait until sometime in the first half of 2010 to see the technology become publicly available (at least if the slides in the video are any indication), but you can now check out the demo for yourself after the break. Just be sure to stick with it for a while or skip ahead to the 1:20 mark -- they show a non-accelerated video at the beginning for an all too painful comparison.

[Via Liliputing]

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 28th 2009 2:01PM]

The point: it's what you missed entirely.

[MioTheGreat Posted Sep 28th 2009 4:03PM]

He didn't phrase it very eloquently or diplomatically, but he's not entirely wrong. Microsoft really one-upped Adobe with Silverlight on the video front. The seamless handling of baudrate switching alone is something I haven't seen Flash do.

[nAv Posted Sep 28th 2009 2:01PM]

What's interesting is that silverlight's been doing this for a long time

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/sep09/09-08HTTPVideoPR.mspx?rss_fdn=Press%20Releases

I wish Hulu and other video distribution sites would at least have it as an alternative for users to TRY

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 28th 2009 2:31PM]

Yeah, you missed the point just like DarkLord up there. It's not about sending out an HD video stream, it's about the ability of the user's computer to decode the content smoothly.

Up until now, GPUs weren't able to assist in playing back Flash (or Silverlight, for that matter) content. The whole load was on the CPU, causing netbooks and older computers to have a hard time playing back high-quality and HD Flash videos.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 28th 2009 2:39PM]

Perhaps you missed the point TJ? silverlight 3 has GPU video acceleration, it uses dx on windows and opengl everywhere else.. it only got announced god.. what, 6 months+ ago?

[nAv Posted Sep 28th 2009 3:28PM]

yup! sorry perhaps I linked the wrong article. here you go!
http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/09/silverlight-3-out-of-beta-joins-forces-with-your-gpu-for-hd-str/

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 28th 2009 3:38PM]

Aah, I see. Good to know.

You were right, I was wrong.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 28th 2009 2:39PM]

You can already do this on OS X Snow Leopard for H264 flash videos with ClickToFlash which uses Quicktime X for GPU accelerated H264 decode.

[va jj Posted Sep 28th 2009 2:57PM]

did apple pay users to post about their products in every thread?


p.s. flash porn , finally!

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 29th 2009 4:17AM]

No - we just have a long-standing hatred of Adobe and their complete inability to deliver a Flash solution for the Macintosh platform. There is a reason why the iPhone doesn't have Flash and the Macintosh version of the Adobe Flash Player is the reason. It is such an immense resource hog (watching a YouTube video? Well, you can kiss goodbye to 120% of processors on a 2.33GHz C2D MacBook Pro) that if you put it on an iPhone then the thing would just melt.

[Jeff Kibuule Posted Sep 28th 2009 3:10PM]

I'll wait to see what a 32nm shrink does to increase performance in a netbook.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 29th 2009 4:02PM]

What is the point when Flash player will mainly push H.264 playback.

[AloDC Posted Sep 28th 2009 3:16PM]

Good, cause watching Kahlan's breasts in Legend of the Seek in SD on Hulu is not cutting it.

[FuturePastNow Posted Sep 28th 2009 3:24PM]

Fecking finally. Flash is a CPU hog on even fast computers.

[jonaseriksson Posted Sep 28th 2009 5:27PM]

now we only need stutter-free flash video on the mac and all is well..

[AlexNC Posted Sep 28th 2009 6:29PM]

Awesomeness!!

[MaverickDBZ Posted Sep 29th 2009 3:32AM]

Adobe should run a beta test program. I'd really like to try this out and see how it compares to Silverlight.

[asdf Posted Sep 29th 2009 4:23AM]

Uh, nVidia should just ditch Atom and turn Ion into a full cgpu. Atom by itself currently seems pretty much useless in multimedia environment.

[Johannes K Posted Oct 6th 2009 4:03AM]

You can find the Live Demo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW_39iecav0

The old video has been deleted ;(