Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta released with H.264 hardware video decoding for laptops

by Julian Prokaza
on Tue 17 Nov 2009 Comment

Adobe has released a beta version of Flash Player 10.1 for Windows, Mac OS and Linux. This isn’t normally something of note, but this update is the first to hardware acceleration of H.264 video.

This means that the hard work of decoding streaming HD video is taken away from the processor and handed to the graphics chipset. The result should be smoother HD video playback on laptops with energy efficient processors that aren't otherwise up to full-screen HD video — something that's about to become a big deal, thanks to YouTube's recent announcement that it's adding 1080p video to its service.

A wide range of mobile graphics chipsets are supported by Flash Player 10.1, including NVIDIA Ion and Intel’s 4 Series, which includes the GMA HD4500M. So, this means that some netbooks and ULV ultraportables like the Samsung X120 should now be able to play HD video much more smoothly — though Atom-powered netbooks with the Intel GMA 500 chipsets are still left in the lurch.

More annoying is that Flash 10.1’s H.264 hardware acceleration is only available under Windows According to Adobe:

Linux currently lacks a developed standard API that supports H.264 hardware video decoding, and Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs. We will continue to evaluate adding the feature to Linux and Mac OS in future releases.

Multi-touch support is only available under Windows 7, too — bad luck MacBook users…

Flash Player 10.1 is pre-release software and Adobe advises that you uninstall any previous versions of Flash before upgrading. Here’s the full list of supported mobile graphics chipsets:

  • ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4xxx series (and higher)
  • Intel 4 Series Chipset family, starting with the graphics driver version 15.16.2.1986
  • NVIDIA Ion
  • NVIDIA Ion LE
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTS 260M
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250M
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTS 160M
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTS 150M
  • NVIDIA GeForce GT 240M
  • NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M
  • NVIDIA GeForce GT 130M
  • NVIDIA GeForce G210M
  • NVIDIA GeForce G110M
  • NVIDIA GeForce G105M
  • NVIDIA GeForce G102M
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GT
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GS
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GTS
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GT
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9650M GS
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GS
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9500M GS
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9500M G
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9400M G
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9300M G
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9200M GS
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9100M G
  • NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS
  • NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT
  • NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
  • NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS
  • NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT
  • NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS

[ Adobe]

Originally published on www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk, now incorporated into Broadband Genie

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