I've been reading all these threads about how current BD players will not be able to do PIP b/c they lack a 2nd video decoder. I was just wondering. Is a 2nd video decoder absolutely required to do PIP? And is this a blu-ray issue only? The xbox 360 add-on is capable of PIP and i doubt msft was forward looking enough to include a 2nd video decoder in the 360. can PIP be accomplished via software?

My apologies if this is a stupid question. i'm just waiting to get a bd player but do not want to miss out on PIP. I personally think the PIP on hd-dvd is really cool and makes watching extras more tolerable.

It requires the ability to decode two separate video and audio streams and present them both at the same time. The PS3, 360 and Computers all do this in software (PS3 is assumed it will although not official), but standalones don't have the processing power to throw around. So yes if you're looking at standalones, it's needed.

That being said, films like Crank and The Descent just re-recorded the entire movie over again with the 2nd video window hard encoded. This technically isn't PiP, but it accomplishes the same presentation. It also chews up a lot of space and doesn't allow for any flexibility with sizing, position, audio mixing, etc. which PiP provides.

Thanks. I guess I'll just wait for the profile 1.1 players to hit the street.

Don't the HD DVD players use their Intel CPU to decode PIP? The SoC for the 3rd gen is supposed to be powerful enough to handle the main video and PIP.

I'm not clear on what the HD DVD players use for PiP decoding. I had thought that the Intel chip was there for HDi, but I don't know that includes the second PiP stream or if another video decoder chip is doing that. Going forward I'd assume it'd all be built into SoC, to get costs down.

On the HD-A1, the BCM 7411 can't do the 2nd stream (same chip as one used in samsung BDP1000), so the P4 was doing the 2nd stream decode (my guess).

On the HD-A2, the NEC chip does both streams, but the built in 400MHz MIPS can't handle the HDi processing, so the Celeron had to handle it.

In terms of work load, running a html/xml browser with animation effects is heavier than running java binaries. So the cpu workload of tough HDi scripts should be heavier on cpu cycles than those compiled BD-J .jar files. HDi is easier to author though, like javascript is easier to write than actual java code.

I'm still waiting to see how a HD DVD player can handle HDi if it doesn't include some large x86 cpu. My suspicion is that BRCM would have to spin a chip with a 1GHz mips in order to run HDi or it's going to crawl a bit.

The SoC in the A2 and the XA2 - NEC EMMA3

http://www.eu.necel.com/news/documents/pr07-01-17_Annex.pdf

http://www.necus.com/companies/2/NECElectronics_Introduces_Next_%20Generation.pdf

It is to my understanding that HD DVD calls for a main image and a PIP image - the Soc has two processors - a large one for the main image and a less powerful one for the small PIP image.

I thought that BD's specs called for DS 1080P video streams which means the SoC would have to have 2 large processors to handle the bit rates. Plus it needs tp do Luma Keying

The SoC from the Pioneer, Panasonic and Sony S1

http://www.sigmadesigns.com/public/Products/SMP8630/pdf_files/bluray8634_br.pdf

Could be wrong - waiting to hear from someone.

A newbie when it comes to this.....Have a new Samsung DLP tv w/one tuner. Can I add another tuner, in some form...dvd player or receiver, etc to enable the PIP function on the set for tv channels?

A newbie when it comes to this.....Have a new Samsung DLP tv w/one tuner. Can I add another tuner, in some form...dvd player or receiver, etc to enable the PIP function on the set for tv channels?

This thread is totally unrelated to what you want to do and is also the wrong forum to ask. If your TV is capable of PiP you can likely use this function with any external source connected to it. Also many PiP TV's also have an extra tuner built in.

For more accurate and specific info go to the display forum (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=9) for your type of TV and ask the question while including the model number.

A newbie when it comes to this.....Have a new Samsung DLP tv w/one tuner. Can I add another tuner, in some form...dvd player or receiver, etc to enable the PIP function on the set for tv channels?

Some sat (& cable?) boxes have multiple tuners built in, and are capable of displaying PiP for you, even if your TV could not on it's own.

However, if you are just using an over-the-air (OTA) antenna, and no external box, then you are out of luck.

I'm still waiting to see how a HD DVD player can handle HDi if it doesn't include some large x86 cpu.Could you point out where the large x86 cpu is in a HD-A3? AFAIK the only general purpose cpu in it is a MIPS.

http://www.film-talk.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=20579
CPU: NEC VR5701C MIPS RISC (@ 333MHz / CPU for HDi) / NEC EMMA3 (CPU for video/audio decoding)