Legit Reviews

Dual-Stream Decode Hardware Acceleration

Recently, studios have begun taking advantage of the additional space high-definition media Blu-Ray discs provide by adding dual-stream picture-in-picture functionality to movies. Often the PIP content is coupled with advanced BD-J (Java) features, so offloading the CPU as much as possible is even more important for titles with these advanced features.

The latest NVIDIa PureVideo HD engine now supports dual-stream hardware acceleration which offloads the CPU and has the workload handled by the more powerful GPU. I'm not sure if ATI cards support dual-stream decoding...

The question I have is what movies are dual-stream titles and how can you figure this out as it doesn't say on the packaging or on any site that I can find? Not all PIP content is dual-stream or is all PIP dual-stream?

Known Dual-Stream Movies:

Transformers (H.264)
Jumper (H.264)
Resident Evil: Extinction (H.264)
Sunshine (H.264)
WAR (H.264)

I just bought Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Blu-ray) and when looking at the box and the Blu-Ray site it doesn't say anything - http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/movies.php?id=1136

so this would be used to have developer commentary picture in picture with the movie or something?

yup that is my understanding... I don't own any of the dual-stream decode titles though... I just bought Ironman and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this week, so I spent my $60 movie budget...

I think that for my IGP articles that it would be crucial to look at dual-stream decoding performance as that looks like a feature that will be standard in 2009 and beyond.