On Nov 11, 2007, at 12:20 PM, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
>STM claims 1080i H.264 HiProfile:
>
>http://www.st.com/stonline/products/literature/bd/11102/sti7100.pdf
>
>This isn't a full data sheet but just a product blurb.
>
>It does have USB 2.0 and SATA built in. Sorry no Ethernet. It might be able
>to use an external
>Ethernet chip. It has UARTs but don't know how fast they are.
On page 4 there is a picture of an ethernet controller hanging off the EMI --
looks promising.
As for the UARTs, I imagine the one for IR is 40Khz and the one for RS232 is
115200, but those
are just guesses -- they could be general purpose and go to much higher speeds.
There are a total
of 4.
As for the rest of it, it looks really nice! If we can get it working with all
those features, I would
be happy. SATA is a nice bonus feature -- just plug it in and there you go. Is
there a cost estimate?
Now we get to the bad parts:
1) Only decodes Mpeg-2 and AVC. I imagine there would be a larger demand if we
supported Mpeg-4
and DV -- the rest of the codecs, while nice to support, are not necessary.
2) It has HDCP. While this is "good," since we don't have to worry about it and
we get support for
some larger TVs and higher resolutions, it has severe legal problems (are
we even allowed to buy
HDCP-enabled chips in the first place, let alone sell them?) IIUC.
3) No updating anything. This is a first-gen piece of silicon, so we should
face the facts -- there will
be problems. If we use a DSP and FPGA, just load another updated program
and be done.
4) No A/V inputs! Fine, it has 2 channel PCM in, but nothing worth noting. We
could add some external
device to the EMI, but that would likely increase the cost to above the
other options.
Also, this is just plain speculation -- if "Sigma Designs chips are said to
have problems with
anything other than plain play mode," (from 1st draft of requirements) these
might have similar
problems.
Still, it simplifies our lives immensely, so we should consider it. Do we have
an ETA? ;-)
nick
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