nVidia video card does poor job of decoding MPEG2 1080i on LibreElec Generic AMD/Intel HTPC

Just thought I would share my experiences with using VDPAU to decode MPEG2 1080i. I am running 8.2.0 which (as of this writing) has the latest Linux nVidia drivers. 1080i MPEG2 is what you get from live TV (OTA or Cable). I am using a GTX 1050 which is relatively modern and powerful. VDPAU acceleration did a relatively poor job of decoding and deinterlacing MPEG2 1080i content. The integrated AMD GPU in the AMD processor in my HTPC did a much better job using VAAPI. So if you are viewing mainly MPEG2 1080i content, I would stay away from nVidia cards, I don't have an external AMD card to see if that is better than the integrated AMD GPU.

Other HTPC build details:

ASRock A88M-ITX/AC R2.0 Socket FM2+/ AMD A88X/ DDR3/ SATA3&USB3.0 motherboard

AMD A10-Series APU Processor with Radeon R7 Graphics (A10-7860K)

I am not sure this is true for all AMD GPUs. When using the AMD APU for video, Kodi offers VAAPI hardware acceleration options that disappear when using the nVidia card for video.

In any case, I reran my comparison making sure I was using VDPAU hardware acceleration on both GPUs and the results remain the same. The AMD APU produces significantly better video than the GTX 1050 with a 1080i MPEG2 source. I have all VDPAU hardware acceleration options enabled (and VAAPI disabled).