next gen player?

[cat6man]

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1155820

http://www.mpcclub.com/modules.php?n...rticle&sid=782

Syabas just announced the next generation media player using the new sigma 8643 chip running at 667MHz............supposedly optimized for bluray support and hdmi1.3a to support transfer of high rez audio formats.

i hope sage is looking at this for a hd300 digital media player..........since it was just announced for first deliveries in mid-July (per MPCClub), i'd be happy with something from sage by year end

caveat: i don't speak for sage, nor expect them to reveal product strategy here (or now)............but the market moves on fast these days, and i am so happy with my hd200 that i really want sage to be there with an 8643-based player (beg, beg) as their bluray-optimized solution.

couple of key new items:
1. built in bluray playback support (including java machine, bluray sdk)
2. connection for SATA bluray drive
3. hdmi1.3a

[Brent]

Who knows for sure, but I would expect at some point we'll see another evolution of the extender/player with an updated Sigma chipset. The capabilities in that one are a nice improvement for sure.

[jquinlan]

"The followup to the popular PopcornHour media streamer series has finally been announced, and the list of features makes it look worth the wait. Revealed in a post on the Networked Media Tank forums the C200 contains an upgraded Sigma SMP8643 667 Mhz processor, HDMI 1.3 out, two SATA slots, a drive bay for mounting your own HDD, DVD or even Blu-ray drive (requires internal HDD or 1GB USB stick) and supports a list of networking standards, codecs and containers far too long to recount here. At first glance, only DivX jumps out as missing from the list, have a look at the forum posting and let us know if you spot. Of course, there's already a video unboxing available, seen after the break (along with the copied list of specs) or check out the full Google translated early hands on impressions from HomeTheater.co.il. The most pressing questions of when will these be available and for how much, will have to be answered at another time."

Article: http://www.networkedmediatank.com/sh....php?tid=23731

[mayamaniac]

Should be great for Blu-Ray people. But I'm with Apple on Blu-Ray. I don't think it has a long future in terms of delivering content. I rather see SageTV develop more HD streaming services, such as partnering with Netflix and Hulu.

And as much as I love the HD Extenders, I'm more interested in something from the nVidia Ion platform. Until now, there hasn't been a lowcost small form factor PC that can deliver flawless 1080P. If they could produce a small unit similar to the HD-200 that can be mounted to the back of the HDTV, with Windows 7, run silently, connected to HDTV via HDMI, play all video formats up to 1080P, and in the $300 range, then I'm all for it. With USB and bluetooth, you can extend its features even more such as Blu-Ray drive, wireless devices, etc.

[simonen]

I don't think that Blue-ray has a long shelf life either. Even TV manufacturers are starting to include online media streaming built right into the TV.

[reggie14]

It looks pretty impressive. It's incredibly feature-packed. I know it's sort of a gimmick, but I really like the little monochrome display. I think it would be nice to be able to look over to the extender and see, for example, how much time is left in the current show. I'm not sure how much I'd really be willing to pay for that, but it sounds kind of nice.

I don't really understand how chips like the sigma 8643 work. Does the CPU play double duty, doing things like UI drawing as well as video decoding, or is there a separate execution unit that does video decoding? I guess it could be both, but really I'm just wondering to what extent a faster CPU definitely means 1) better video playback for high-bitrate videos, 2) better UI performance, or 3) both (which seems like the likely answer).

The blu-ray feature is interesting, although one thing confuses me: why do you need to have an internal hard drive or 1GB USB stick to use a blu-ray drive? Does the unit need some more space for software to play things back? Is it a buffer? In any event, it doesn't seem particularly useful. I'm guessing you won't be able to rip blu-ray discs into HDD storage anyway, so what's the added benefit versus just using an external blu-ray player? I suppose cost and space, but that's not terribly exciting to me. I'm pretty glad Sage hasn't put optical drives in their extenders. I wouldn't mind it if Sage did offer models with drives (though, I'd never buy one), but I think there are better things to do.

I'm not sure I completely agree with mayamaniac that online distribution of HD video is going to be mainstream in the near-term (i.e., the likely lifetime of these systems), but I agree we're moving towards that. The Ion platform has one big hurdle it is going to have to overcome somehow: the very limited hardware acceleration in Flash and Silverlight video. The Ion hardware can't upscale and play back video at full screen from Hulu or Netflix. I can't even do that on my slightly overclocked Athlon X2 3800 because the default scaling method is too computationally expensive. Silverlight 3 is suppose to change that by incorporating real hardware acceleration, but we're probably at least a year off from seeing Silverlight 3 in online video players. And, I don't really expect to see anything from Adobe that fixes that issue in Flash.

[Fuzzy]

I think the best future option might actually be a BDJ Sage Client. Even if not fully featured, it would allow Sage Client capabilities on virtually any off the shelf blu-ray player. The Blu-Ray players already contain pretty much every bit of hardware a sage client would require, so it only makes sense.

[stuckless]

I'm not sure that Blu-Ray is going away any time soon. People cite things like that fact that DVD sales in 1997-98 were way higher than the blu-ray sales of 2007-08, but they fail to realize that in 1997 there were 100million SD tv's and and in 2007 there were only 26million HDtvs in people's homes. Blu-ray is an expensive investment because you need both the HD player and the HD tv, but the cost of both are comming down. I paid over $400 for my first dvd player... I recently payed the same for my first blu-ray player, a ps3. I think I got a better value this time around.

Blu-Ray is also more than just a disc format, it's a complete technology, including things like bd-live which opens so many doors for possiblilities, including streaming media services.

Having looked at the bdj development kits, I can certainly see where a bdj sage placeshifter client is possible.

I do agree that perhaps we'll see the end of the "disc" format and it might be replaced by something else, either streaming services or ssd, but I think that it'll be a few years before that happens as well.

as for the new PH device... you wonder if it would be possible to load up the HD200 firmware (or dirivative) to run on that device, or if sage would publish a "kit" that could be placed on other media extender hardware platforms.

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I don't really understand how chips like the sigma 8643 work. Does the CPU play double duty, doing things like UI drawing as well as video decoding, or is there a separate execution unit that does video decoding? I guess it could be both, but really I'm just wondering to what extent a faster CPU definitely means 1) better video playback for high-bitrate videos, 2) better UI performance, or 3) both (which seems like the likely answer).

i think both but it is not just chip speed

this is not a general purpose cpu but a specialized chip designed with dedicated engines to perform certain tasks.........go to the sigma website and look at the reference design documents for the 8642 or 8644 and you can see how the chip is architected

[aflat]

Originally Posted by reggie14

The blu-ray feature is interesting, although one thing confuses me: why do you need to have an internal hard drive or 1GB USB stick to use a blu-ray drive? Does the unit need some more space for software to play things back? Is it a buffer? In any event, it doesn't seem particularly useful. I'm guessing you won't be able to rip blu-ray discs into HDD storage anyway, so what's the added benefit versus just using an external blu-ray player? I suppose cost and space, but that's not terribly exciting to me. I'm pretty glad Sage hasn't put optical drives in their extenders. I wouldn't mind it if Sage did offer models with drives (though, I'd never buy one), but I think there are better things to do.

Most likely this is required for the encryption key processing. The encryption key can be updated dynamically. I'm not exactly sure how it works, so if your interested you'll have too look up more. When you put a new bluray disk in your drive, it can contain a key to decrypt it that your bluray drive doesn't have. Somehow, the bluray disk can update the set of keys your drive contains, so it can now decrypt the disk you just put in. This is why you have to keep updating software to play disks. AnydvdHD has to find the new key and add it to it's list of keys to try to use to decrypt with. The movie industry is trying this instead of just using 1 key for everything like they did with DVD's.

This is just a guess, I'm not sure why storage is needed, but this would make sense.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Should be great for Blu-Ray people. But I'm with Apple on Blu-Ray. I don't think it has a long future in terms of delivering content. I rather see SageTV develop more HD streaming services, such as partnering with Netflix and Hulu.

Laserdisc was around for 20 years. I think Blu-ray has a lot of parallels with it. Both formats focus on their ability to deliver high quality audio/video. Both are sought by those who appreciate said Audio/Video.

Blu-ray will be around for a while, there's enough willpower behind it and I think that owning discs, and higher quality, glitch free playback will be compelling for some time to come.

But I do think that Blu-ray will never become as big a DVD.

And as much as I love the HD Extenders, I'm more interested in something from the nVidia Ion platform. Until now, there hasn't been a lowcost small form factor PC that can deliver flawless 1080P.

I have my doubts as to whether a "PC", even Ion, can deliver the sort of guaranteed "flawless" video that an extender can. Especially not if it's running a general purpose OS.

The only way I can see to do it would be (for example) for Sage to provide an "extender" image for Ion devices that included the entire filesystem, OS up. And then well, how's it better than an extender...

Originally Posted by reggie14

I don't really understand how chips like the sigma 8643 work. Does the CPU play double duty, doing things like UI drawing as well as video decoding, or is there a separate execution unit that does video decoding? I guess it could be both, but really I'm just wondering to what extent a faster CPU definitely means 1) better video playback for high-bitrate videos, 2) better UI performance, or 3) both (which seems like the likely answer).

It's a SOC, a System On A Chip, it includes a general purpose CDU, graphics "processor", Audio DSP(s), and dedicated hardware Video decoders.

Faster CPU would probably lead to better UI performance but would have nothing to do with Video quality, that's determined solely by the capabilities of the Video decoder, and the C200 looks to have the same video decoder specs as the HD200's SOC.

It looks like the 8640 has quite a bit more CPU power, and an extra DSP, HDMI 1.3a vs 1.2, that's about it:
http://www.sigmadesigns.com/Products...ion_guide.html

The blu-ray feature is interesting, although one thing confuses me: why do you need to have an internal hard drive or 1GB USB stick to use a blu-ray drive? Does the unit need some more space for software to play things back? Is it a buffer?

The Blu-ray Profile 2.0 spec calls for 1GB of local storage (Profile 1.1 only requires 256MB). It "sounds" like they're going full up and getting all the BD licensing in place, which is truely shocking to me.

In any event, it doesn't seem particularly useful. I'm guessing you won't be able to rip blu-ray discs into HDD storage anyway, so what's the added benefit versus just using an external blu-ray player?

You don't need a separate BD player.