AMD Radeon GPUs to support PlayReady 3.0 on Polaris and VEGA in 2018

[Trixanity]

1 hour ago, Zodiark1593 said:

While reviews say the card supports hdcp 2.2 over HDMI 2.0, a) I don't have an hdcp 2.2 compatible display to test with (unlike with testing hardware decode capability), and b) official sources such as Nvidia or EVGA do not seem to specify which hdcp version is available for this card. 

 

I can verify 100% certain that this card can technically decode the content (4k HEVC 10-bit) as I tested it myself with a local file, and supports HDMI 2.0 as verified by Nvidia's website.

My comment wasn't in regards to Maxwell. It was a comment on PlayReady 3.0 requirements. 

 

However a quick search says 960 supports HDCP 2.2 over both HDMI and DP.

It's possible Maxwell does not have the requisite security to enable PlayReady 3.0 but given Nvidia's track record it's not unlikely they merely locked the feature into Pascal for monetary reasons.

[Zodiark1593]

5 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

My comment wasn't in regards to Maxwell. It was a comment on PlayReady 3.0 requirements. 

 

However a quick search says 960 supports HDCP 2.2 over both HDMI and DP.

It's possible Maxwell does not have the requisite security to enable PlayReady 3.0 but given Nvidia's track record it's not unlikely they merely locked the feature into Pascal for monetary reasons.

Hence what I wanted to allude to in that this limitation is entirely arbitrary, whether on Nvidia's part, or just the existence of the DRM itself.

[Trixanity]

17 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Hence what I wanted to allude to in that this limitation is entirely arbitrary, whether on Nvidia's part, or just the existence of the DRM itself.

Sure. i think the biggest question is whether the limitation is software or hardware. Could Nvidia enable it in the driver? Did Nvidia deliberately withhold the hardware implementation till Pascal? Is the DRM so wonky that it took them until Pascal to implement? Or was the specification just so late in its release that it couldn't make it till Pascal? 

 

We'll never know but it's interesting nevertheless because on paper (DRM notwithstanding) GTX 950 and 960 have all the features to support 4K Netflix: HDCP 2.2, HDMI 2.0 and DP 1.2, HEVC decoding (am I forgetting something?).

 

From what I can gather PlayReady was at least in the same year as Maxwell (whether that means before after I don't know but as we all know it takes time to implement hardware changes) but is the hardware implementation so specific it couldn't retroactively be enabled in the driver? DRM itself isn't new so I'm not sure if their decoding path wasn't security-focused already.

 

In either case the consumer always loses when it comes to DRM.

[Dabombinable]

But will they lower their video decode power consumption?

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, Dabombinable said:

But will they lower their video decode power consumption?

It should use relatively little power because it's using a dedicated hardware IP block and not the Stream Processors themselves.

 

That being said, the VEGA APUs have a newer Hardware Decode and Encode block than VEGA dGPUs.

 

The APU version has both the Video and Audio stuff combined I think.