“ATI recently announced the release of a developer’s kit to
support video hardware decoding for Linux on their Rage 128 and
Rage 128 Pro chips. The new Linux VHA Kit adds hardware
support for high quality video (such as MPEG, MPEG2 and DVD) to
Linux, and software support for the iDCT and motion compensation
video acceleration of the ATI RAGE 128[tm]-based accelerators. Loki
is already working to incorporate ATI’s VHA Software Development
Kit into SMPEG, allowing the addition of high-quality MPEG playback
into thier games. ATI says that this announcement confirms
ATI’s pursuit to become ‘the Linux community’s Number One graphics
vendor’. If they keep this up, it wouldn’t surprise me.”
“What does all this mean to a Norwegian kid who’s in a lot of
trouble over DVD? Maybe if he had waited a couple months he
could’ve just helped develop apps with ATI’s kit, rather than
battle in court. Some people think ATI wouldn’t have released this
if he hadn’t wrote DeCSS. But, realisticly, it takes some time to
develop things like this, I’d bet ATI’s had this up thier sleeve
for some time.”