Comment by michaelt

24 days ago

In the modern age image decoders need to handle untrusted inputs, and the big players rarely use hardware image decoding, even when it's available, because it's so hard to rely on its memory safety.

Several 'zero click exploits' have involved image/document format decoder bugs, as messaging apps and file browsers will often generate preview images the moment an image arrives.

3 comments

michaelt

Reply
ZiiS  24 days ago

All Browsers do use hardware decoding for video though, I doubt safety is a major factor.

  • hirako2000  24 days ago

    The factor is latency. Software decoding takes milliseconds.

    Depending on CPU and the video/image resolution, performance drops means the eye perceives lags when the 50ms threshold is reached. For videos, especially at 60fps that matters.

    For still images it doesn't.

    If it ain't broke why fix it.