1.ATI vs NVIDIA
2.h264,hardware codec
3.http://labs.divx.com/DivX-H264-Decoder-DXVA
Note:
All OS's provide a graphics framework
A thirdparty provider can add their codec support in the framework
A thirdparty provider can add their hardware support in the framework
oem A can add their card with hardware codec-B support
oem B can add support for converting their proprietery format-C to codec-B again using the framework
similarly for A1,A2...
codec-B1,codec-B2 etc
frameworkB component and frameworkA component (frameworkB can be dll,frameworkA maybe .sys)
there will be a general OS framework(opencore),then for video and sound there can be other separate frameworks (video v4l,audio alsa)
opencore,gstreamer are os framework