The comment above regarding QSV technology is perfectly correct. Intel HD Graphics with QSV support is truly embedded into the Intel i3, i5, i7 processors. To make this concept easier to understand we usually refer to Intel HD Graphics as the ‘graphics core’ of the Intel processor.
We (ISS) are having an excellent experience with QSV technology and can confirm this technology suits CCTV applications very well. We first introduced QSV support 10 months ago as a feature of SecurOS MediaClient (our new operator interface). Now we have QSV support fully production-level on both client and server side, and use QSV specifically to decompress the h264 stream.
To highlight the benefits of this technology, provided are some numbers from our testing. For ‘extreme’ tests we used an entry level mini-PC Intel DC3217BY (Core i3-3217U, 1.8GHz) with a built-in video card. On this mini-PC, we are able to display 162 channels of video on 2 Full-HD screens (20 fps). This is when we use Axis cameras with dualstream support (MediaClient has stream auto-select feature). When we disable stream the auto-select feature, we are able to decompress and display 32 Full-HD streams. On the same mini-PC with QSV support disabled, we can hardly decompress 2-3 Full-HD steams. For another example, we can take our VideoWall controller. It also shares the same QSV support and is powered with the i7 processor plus a dedicated set of video cards. On live tests, our VideoWall controller can display up to 288 video streams (Axis, 20 fps) on 8 HD screens merged into single desktop.
Currently we are implementing video compression to h264 format using QSV. This is to be used for the transcoding feature of SecurOS RTSP-server -- without overloading the CPU. We can then provide steams from legacy and other ‘special’ cameras to external systems and web/mobile clients.
The only limitation of QSV technology that we see is that it is not yet implemented for major multi-core server platforms. We do not have any problems when we recommend i5 or i7 based PCs as workstations. But many of our installations are sizable systems using blade servers and virtualization. Unfortunately, for those configurations QSV cannot be currently used.
Let me know if you need any additional information about QSV technology implementation.