[brunorsini]

I don't really agree with the author's comment that this is "an unmitigated win for users": if nothing else, hardware products might become more expensive because they will need native encoding/decoding capability for each codec.

[TD-Linux]

Most hardware decoders are microcoded anyway, supporting H.264, ASP, and VC-1. Adding VP8 isn't that bad - Qualcomm, nVidia, and Mediatek already ship VP8 decoders.

The next generation codecs such as HEVC and VP9 are a lot more computationally expensive and do require a lot more die area.

[fithisux]

I thought OpenCL is a standard interface to create decoders. Moreover a DSP could be exposed as an OpenCL machine.