Nvidia 8600m [notebook] h.264 acceleration.

[Mike Iwantprivacy]

Issue : h.264 hardware decode does not seem to be working.
Driver : Nvidia 340.108  recommended driver from the tools.

CPU : T9500 2.6 ghz

Memory 6 Gb.

I would like to use the hardware decoding built into the video card. Everything I have read states that this card supports it.
However when I run steam remote play I see its on dedicated software decode.
When I run firefox I see software decode on youtube videos.
Any application I have seems to be running in software mode. I have tried installing libva packages but no luck.

Does anyone have any hints on how to get this to kick in properly?

[Mike Iwantprivacy]

updated info :

So I can set VLC manually to us vdpau mode. That will drop cpu usage from 20-30% down to 2%. So I know that hardware decode can and does work.
However for some reason it will not "auto select" this mode.

I have also found running vdpau info it show support for hardware decoding of h264 "Main" and "High" profiles  but NOT "Baseline" which seems odd.

I am still looking for answers.