Crazy Cringely Rumor: Apple to do H.264 Hardware in Every Mac

I've never used a MAC but would in a second if it supported AVCHD. Try the Sony 3 CMOS or Panasonic 3CCD products offered in their consumer lines. They are terrific.

He's been reading Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

Fujitsu has announced a 1080i encoding/decoding IC that will be introduced in March 2007, priced at 120 USD. The chip will be produced in a 90 nm process and will support High Profile Level 4 (up to 25 Mbit/s)[15].

The DMS-02 media processor from 3DLabs promises to encode D1 video at 30 fps[16] (equivalent to High 4:2:2 Profile, Level 3).

Ambarella claims to be able to encode 1080i at below one watt of power consumption in their A1 SoC platform[17].

Kind or ironic coming from a guy who has been promising a second season of his NerdTV interviews for over 15 months!! He can't even deliver content himself.

The GPU industry is moving to make hardware acceleration for modern codecs (H.264, VC-1, etc.) a standard feature. The decode side is mostly there and encode support to drive media center apps is not that far away.

So all Cringely can really claim is that Apple will continue to use off the shelf GPUs.

Except that Cringely is very rarely correct. I'm surprised that people take his predictions seriously enough for further discussion. They are more akin to twisted British Comedy.

Intel to buy Apple? Ni!

I think he is onto something here. After all, if you think about it the Apple TV can only mean that Apple Inc. is now (at last) taking the most critical step in realising its iLife philospohy that it stared talkin up all those years ago. For most folk TV is still the most important way of receiving information about the world (whether its news or entertainment). Now that the web is improving with broadband and better quality video the next step has to be making HDTV as easy as possible, something Apple did with MP3, online misic downloads, making music (GarageBand is just the bees knees!) and.... need I go on?

In summary, I can't wait and I think Rob is on the right track. Who knows, Steve Jobs may have some nice Christmas gifts in store for us all!

I doubt they would do this. What they're more likely to do is include encoding/decoding hardware in their Pro line, or else offer a PCI-e card with those capabilities. Avid currently offers real-time 2K support through hardware. I know that if Apple offered this, they would get a LOT of new customers.

I agree with Ben. Cringley has jumped the shark. The "I wonder what the AppleTV HDD is for?" column was the last straw for me. I used to look forward to his theories but now I couldn't care less. Though, on the surface it's an interesting theory if you use a fair amount of tunnel vision.



Travis Bell wrote: "There is hardly any H.264 content out there so I have to ask, does it really matter?"

You're right, there is currently no H.264 content besides HD DVD, Blu-ray, DVB (Digital Video Broadcast standards of Europe), countrywide mandates in Korea, Japan, France, Brazil, Estonia & Slovenia to ustilize H.264 for broadcasts, BBC HD in London, DirecTV, Dish Network, Euro1080 Premiere, ProSieben HD, Sat1 HD, SkyHD in the United Kingdom, Ireland & Italy, 3GPP for cell communication, AVCHD (developed by Sony and Panasonic), and the iTunes Store..... but after we elimate those, you are 'dead on balls' right.

I'm not sure why people are focusing on *de*coding. All future GPU chips (even the Intel GMA X3000) will support hardware acceleration for H.264 decoding. The real news would be hardware support for H.264 *en*coding in the Mac line. That would make a significant difference in outputting HD video targeted at Blu-ray, HD-DVD, or even iMovie HD files targeted at the AppleTV (@720p/24).

This is all fine and good for things like built in video apps (iChat for example) but lets face it guys. There is hardly any H.264 content out there so I have to ask, does it really matter?

If you look at my video library I think 2/400+ are H.264. I would rather see Apple natively support HD MPEG2 (1080i) first... but hey, that technology is only 5 years old now so I am not holding my breath.