[IDEA] Raspberry Pi 2 and H.265/HEVC?

[narotic]

My AMD E350 netbook cannot keep up decoding 720p HEVC in fast moving scenes, which shows how computationally demanding it is. The same holds for my 1st gen Moto G (Snapdragon 400, Adreno 305) with the S/W decoder in MXPlayer. Any half-decent x86 dual core should play those files just fine though, as you've tested yourself as well.

Both the Moto G and the new RPi 2 are based on quad-core cortex A7 CPU's, with a 300MHz frequency advantage for the Moto G. So with standard S/W decoders the RPi will not be able to play 720p HEVC files.

As far as I understand, the only feasible path for optimized decoders on the RPi 2 would be to use its NEON SIMD extensions. Such decoders are already available in an academic setting as well as commercially (e.g., PathPartner claims to decode 720p@30fps on a single core cortex a9). All in all, I believe with a heavily optimized NEON decoder the RPi 2 might be able to eventually play low bitrate 720p HEVC files. This coincides with the response over at the raspberry pi forum.

Just like you I continue to be staggered by the amazing quality of HEVC for small filesizes (check for instance the filesizes of Family Guy episodes). But if you really want to move to HEVC then it'd be better to choose a platform that supports it in hardware (like the new rockchip's or amlogic s805/s812) rather than betting on the RPi 2.