Quote Originally Posted by v_rr View Post
you are saying that shaders is software?
Shaders are a part off the GPU. That GPU has processing power (a lot) and it can process lots off data. In this case it processes the decoding off the movie. All on the GPU, not CPU.

The cpu usage is from the software translating the raw data from the disc, seperating the streams, choosing the right one,decoding it into shader language, which is then processed by the videocard into final video, "post processing", deblocking, colour correction, etc, and all. As such, the data stream can be manipulated by the end user, as before the cpu can translate this data into shader code it must first be decrypted, and here we are about to get into the real meat of what's afoot here.


In hardware encoding the videocard would get the raw data, decide which bitstream to use, hand it off to it's neccesary parts and process it. At this point, there is no possibility of user-intervention, as the encrypted data gets "decoded" at a level the user cannot access, and thereby protecting the copyright holder for the content.

Becuase the datastream is processed "on cpu" into shader code, there is a chance for this un-encrypted code to be captured before it ever hits the gpu, thereby bypassing any copyright protection the media may have offered. This level of interaction is not possible when the bitsream is hardware decoded...and on the HD2900XT, there is no hardware decoding taking place...merely processing of an already decrpyted bitstream.


Now, how they managed to pull this off without the HDDVD and BluRay camps crying out...well...maybe someone needs to tell them.