This is quite a surprise. CoreCodec released today their new CoreAVC decoder in version 1.9.0.
And now it comes: it offers hardware accelerated decoding support. This is realized with Nvidia’s CUDA, and not with Nvidia’s PureVideo engine.
I’m not going to test this against Linux anymore, since I’m on VDPAU now, but I assume, this could also be the end for the Linux integration, too (wild guess), since this version relay on Nvidia’s 182.xx driver version, which will be available for Windows only. Even if CUDA should should work with Linux [UPDATE: it does] , the advantages using CoreAVC on Linux are melting down. Mplayer support for H.264 is getting better and better. The mplayer-mt (multi thread) project is kicking also, and last but not least, we have a really usable hardware acceleration from Nvidia now: VDPAU.

Only ATI and Intel graphics card users may need a working CoreAVC for Linux today, but without any hardware acceleration of course. But since I never could play back AVCHD without restrictions (seeking problem and deinterlaced playback only), I can’t see any reason to try CoreAVC again.

Anyhow, hardware acceleration with CUDA – a really nice idea, and as far as I know, nobody else tried this before.