Industry Insiders Master Q&A thread IV: ONLY Questions to Insiders - Page 106  

Amir:

That meeting that occurred - any chance it had to do with this?


http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...avigation.html

Thanks for the reply Talk.

I'll give you a few reasons why things might go to 10 but not beyond:

1) In the extensive D-Cinema testing that was done by SMPTE, DCI and others in Hollywood, most experts couldn't see more than 11 bits on a big screen under optimal conditions, with the best projectors with everything completely calibrated. So some would question if we really need more than 10 in a consumer environment (some will question if we need more than 8 for that matter, but I think that experiments will clearly show that most people can easily see the difference between 8 and 10).

2) Much of the mastering for consumer applications in Hollywood stops at 10 bits (for D-Cinema that will not be the case, but at that point in the chain the content goes off in a different direction, sometimes to a different company or division).

3) Most of the monitoring and infrastructure for HD, for better or worse, is built on 10 bit HD-SDI.

4) I am only guessing, but I would suspect that consumer displays with HDMI that support greater than 8 bits in will not be able to realisically do anything with more than 10 bits in (even if they advertise things like "14 bit internal processing").

I am not necessarily disagreeing with you, just pointing out what some will be saying as we move forward with the >8 Bit discussion for the new blue laser formats.

- Tom

Hi Tom:

What are the chances we will see a "super" SoC in the next 12 months - one that combines the SoC and the GPU into one chip?

The SoCs available for HD DVD and Blu-ray (or SoC designs that support both formats) already have all or most of the required graphics capabilities on board. This includes BITBLT, scaling, multi layer compositing, luma keying, font drawing, etc.

Are you thinking of other graphics operations like 3D being added to a blue laser CE device? If that's what you mean, there is basically no requirement for than in either blue laser spec.

- Tom

I was thinking along the lines of the HD DVD players as i have yet to see a BD player with "under the hood" photo's that show what the motherboard looks like.

Here is the Toshiba A35:



Here is the Toshiba A3:



As I understand the MB - there is the NEC Emma3 SoC and the new NEC MIPS GPU.

What is the MIPS GPU doing?

Perhaps we're thinking of the term "GPU" in different ways. I think of it as defined here:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&d...ition&ct=title

and here:

http://www.techterms.com/definition/gpu

And you?

Also, given the above definitions, could you point me at a URL for a MIPS GPU? We know they make CPU cores and chips (which many companies use in CE designs, but I can't find a MIPS GPU.

- Tom

Sorry . . . my bad.

GPU = General Processing Unit. What is under the cooling sink in the 2 pictures I provided.

And I was not able to locate anything having to do with the NEC MIPS Processor as it pertains to HD DVD players on NEC's website - yet there it is.

Tom,

Where are we as far as hardware for real-time encoding of HD? Anything out there that can do realtime VC-1/AVC 1920x1080p (or i) with multichannel sound? How long would (or even if) this takes to get into the consumer/prosumer market?

The CPU (MIPS or other) in CE designs (whether it be on the same SoC as all the other stuff or separate on the mother board) typically runs the operating system (Linux or WinCE for example) and all of the software stack for the respective design. This means handling disc navigation, I/O, network if present, the front panel, HDi and/or BD-J, high level security, the IR remote, etc.

Note that some designs have more than one CPU - sometimes dual MIPS processors for example.

- Tom

Those are quite convincing arguments. But still I'm not satisfied.

When standards are made, most often bean counters and short sighted people seem to win. E.g. why were HD DVD and Blu-Ray specced with a max of 8 bit color depth? Why was DVD specced with 60i/50i encoding? I remember when DVD was first demonstrated on Cebit I asked one of the Toshiba guys: "Can DVD do anything more than PAL?". The Toshiba guy stared at me for a few seconds and then said: "But that wouldn't be compatible with TVs, would it?". I'm aware that speccing higher than absolutely necessary costs money cause all the chips must be built for the max required spec. But isn't it still better in the long run to be a bit more forward looking when creating specs? How can it be that we are talking right now about 10bit being easily better than 8bit - when there are 2 brand new HD disc formats which only support 8bit?

Now with this line of reasoning wouldn't it make sense to go for 12bit the next time even if most content will only be 10bit in the first few years of the new standard/spec? Shouldn't we stop worrying about which content is available in which format today and instead try to find out which specs would be optimal for future use? Isn't that also the only way to solve the hen and egg problem? If such a future oriented standard existed maybe the content providers would be motivated to make use of the standard sooner or later.

Thoughts of the Insiders about this?

OK . . we are now on the same page.

Isn't the goal of the CEM's to make the motherboard as small as possible - to not only save money but also to increase the efficency of the chips.?

Yes. Cost, size, power consumption - all of those. That's why the new SoC designs have everything on-board.

- Tom

So without leaking anything you can't Tom . . . where do you see the next cost/size reduction in the chassis of a BD/HD DVD player?

FWIW, GPU generally stands for Graphics Processing Unit.

I am not Tom but yes, there are HD AVC consumer encoders used in HD camcorders. The quality mind you, is nothing like professional and off-line encoders. But they do exist.

FYI: You can get a pretty good look at a few players' insides in this article:
http://www.hometheatermag.com/discplayers/1007bluray/

I agree with the rest of your post but not this example. Reason Wal-Mart/HP pulled the plug on this is because building such services end-to-end is hard and expensive in the short-term (i.e. you lose money). And without Apple allowing interop with iPod, not very attractive to many consumers. Talking about Apple, if the bottom is falling out of digital distribution, no one has told them: http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/26/a...e-rental-deal/

Maybe the drives. We also have to acknowlege that there may be some hard cost limits for the manufacturers on the royalties they have to pay on all of the intellectual property in the boxes (the codecs and so forth).

Originally Posted by Talkstr8t
Walmart having discontinued their download service this week and HP pulling back from offering infrastructure to support it is clear evidence that the market simply isn't there today and isn't compelling enough in the near-term for Walmart and HP to invest in.

- Talk

Amir, I fail to find the rational for your disagreement with Talk. You say short term and Talk says near term. The only difference is that you wanted to comment about Apple.

Yes - I do understand "fixed costs."

If you can - what does a SoC cost a CEM? I have heard in the neighborhood of $25 each.

The argument is not about anything but the example he used. He seemed to be saying Wal-Mart shut down their store (and HP with it) because they don't believe in digital distribution. That is incorrect. WMT would love to own iTunes store TODAY (as would many other companies). Hence the appropriate mention of Apple store.

I am very familiar with HP and WMT activities in this regard so didn't want to leave the misunderstanding be out there.

EDIT: Reposted my question here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=965757

My apologies, I didn't see the 'split' thread before I originally responded.

Tom,

Broadcom's BCM7440 is a dual format SOC, obviously it decodes the various video codecs.

Does it decode the advanced audio codecs for both formats? If so, does it decode DD-THD multi-channel or just the 2ch substream? Similarly, does it decode the HD MA of DTS or just the core stream?

Does it process the HDi and/or BD-J code for menus and interactivity or are these handled by something else?

TIA

Do manufacturers of dual format boxes get double-dipped on royalties? For example, do they have to pay twice for the ability to use MPEG-2 on HD DVD and on BD? For that matter... do they get triple-dipped since all players also support DVD?

Or do they pay royalties once for IP that is shared across the different platforms?

It does what's mandatory for both specs plus whatever our respective customers require above and beyond that.

Yes on HDi and BD-J.

- Tom

You should probably direct this question to the licensing agencies and/or the actual player manufacturers (both CE and SW (the latter for PCs)), the latter being the "attach point" for royalty payments.

- TLM

So if I understand correctly...

When you sell your SOC, that cost does not include rights to actually use the decoders on the hardware? In other words, after purchasing your SOC, each manufacturer must still handle royalty payments when they release/sell the final product?

Don't take this as a legal reading of MPEG-LA as I am not a lawyer. With that disclaimer out of the way, I am pretty sure for MPEG-2 you only pay once. But you will pay for the same patent three times if it is used in VC-1/AVC/MPEG-2.

There are concepts called "field of use" and "patent exhaustion" which often governs whether you pay once or more than once.

ok, if i were a hypothetical customer and i wanted it to do all the video codecs and all the audio codecs, including the lossless codecs for full multi-channel decoding as well as HDMI bistreaming of uncompressed formats, would the BCM7440 be physically capable of meeting my needs ?