Filed under: Hardware, Multimedia, Rumors
AlleyInsider: QuickTime on a chip?
Silicon Alley Insider is offering "pure speculation" based on a tip that Apple's Fall future product transition is a video upgrade to Apple products that includes a QuickTime encoder/decoder on a chip.
As cool as this would be, I don't personally think it's a significant-enough development to warn investors about. Unless, of course, it's part and parcel of more substantial changes to Apple's product lines.
Having video playback functions handled by a separate microprocessor capable of dealing with the variety of media formats that QuickTime handles could yield performance increases for lower-end Macs (with less-powerful video cards) and battery life savings for handheld devices.
Also, depending on what codecs are included on-board, it could mean an end to countless hours converting video specifically for your iPhone, iPod touch, or Apple TV. Additionally, MacRumors' Arnold Kim notes that it could be of some use for encoding Blu-Ray video.
All I want is DivX AVI playback on my iPod touch. Pretty please?
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
L. Monahan said 8:21PM on 8-11-2008
Amen on the DIVX
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Brandon said 8:32PM on 8-11-2008
Because Apple is being so public about this, I would think it would be a bigger transition than this...
I hoping for something more 'revolutionary' btw
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josh said 8:35PM on 8-11-2008
This will be nice to have, by the way nice photoshop on the microchip picture.
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gr33n said 8:39PM on 8-11-2008
i see there's also TUAW on a chip right there ...
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Darren said 8:47PM on 8-11-2008
Cringely has been predicting this for over a year.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080801_005339.html
Having H.264 *encoding* hardware in my MacBook would be badass.
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Rod said 8:53PM on 8-11-2008
I use iSquint (FREE, http://www.isquint.org/) to convert divx/xvid content to play it on my iphone. Works very well.
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SideOfBacon said 9:22PM on 8-11-2008
Why would they need an additional decoding chip? As we've already heard about Snow Leopard, they're porting the Quicktime enhancements/optimization they've made for the iPhone back into OSX proper (Quicktime X). For them to add an additional chip into the equation would make for a bit of a messy transition.
For *encoding* media, it might be nice, but, with Snow Leopard, I think their time is being better spent with optimizing encoding via OpenCL (using the floating point Graphics processor rather than CPU).
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dagamer34 said 9:36PM on 8-11-2008
The problem isn't that video cards can't do this already; it's the efficiency at which it's done. A dedicated H.264 encoder would be far more efficient for decoding Blu-ray movies than any video card could because you don't have to power a huge graphics card to do so.
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David Hildreth said 9:52PM on 8-11-2008
There are many codecs and contains far better then divx/avi... I think your anime and family episodes might just be stuck in the past.
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Damien Guard said 10:39PM on 8-11-2008
Maybe they think they need this hardware encoder to get video recording on the iPhone.
[)amien
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Tim said 10:54PM on 8-11-2008
PDQ! haha when did they shrink prof. Schickele into a chip
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SpinThis! said 10:55PM on 8-11-2008
The most convincing arguments I've read about this stem around Blu-ray playback on the Mac (see the macrumors thread on this). By including a chip to decode on the board, Apple can neatly step around all the DRM restrictions movie studios want and not get OS X itself all hung up around it. Plus, when it's not being used, it can work as a co-processor for certain tasks if correctly applied.
As for DivX—or more likely people are using the "open" and better quality xvid codec used in perian which can decode DivX— can you get out of 2000 already? It's only really useful if you have an old library of stuff encoded with it or you actively pirate movies/shows, neither of which Apple cares about.
There's really no reason for Apple to "license" DivX when they have a superior format anyway, including their own "clean" and licensed mpeg-4. It's also murky territory to include competing technology with your own product, especially one that started its life as a hacked Microsoft version of MPEG-4 part 3.
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Jeff said 12:49PM on 8-12-2008
word.
I think it's pretty obvious when people ask for DivX support, they're really just asking for files-from-bit-torrent support.
I hardly care. h.264 works great for me.
Robert said 11:19PM on 8-11-2008
H264 PDQ?
TUAW R0X?
LOL, somebody's been spoofed!
Besides, how would a decoder in an 8-pin package work? How is it supposed to get the data, from a serial RAM? And where are the outputs? This is ridiculous.
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Robert Palmer said 11:43PM on 8-11-2008
That is not an actual photo of the chip, but an illustration I created solely for the purpose of the article. I don't have nearly enough electrical engineering experience to know if the photo is accurate or not; I only have the Photoshop experience to make it look interesting partnered up with the text. :)
Tim said 12:05AM on 8-12-2008
Maybe this is why they bought that microchip manufacturer. Maybe Apple has a EEE PC clone on the way, but with more of their personal style. It'd be like a hybrid of a low-end MacBook and a high end iPhone.
Since I'm speculating more here, I could see the chip being used to enable the level of video playback most Apple users are accustomed to, and perhaps also enabling video encoding so the computer could be used for video chat on 3G networks or WiFi. It would support simplified tethering with the iPhone (If they could get AT&T to get behind that). It would also have a multitouch screen with very sharp resolution to compensate for its size and support for existing iTouch and iPhone apps. It would also have a full keyboard, but no trackpad to keep room for the keyboard, partly to encourage people to embrace multitouch in an OSX setting. Of course, it would have at least one USB 2.0 port for mice, an external optical drive, etc. Use of the Intel Atom or perhaps the next version of it, plotted to integrate several motherboard components and video, would be a no-brainer. I'd guess an MSRP starting at $499 for one with low disc space and otherwise lacking features, and $799 for a really decked out one.
Other features I'd guess: OLED external display. Kept invisible most of the time, but will appear for Growl-style notices, like someone IMing you, email, or iCal alerts. Simple things the system could take note of before going to sleep or which could be pushed over the internet to the laptop. It could also encourage people to video things with the integrated camera other than themselves, perhaps by allowing the camera to face the exterior of the computer, rather than towards the user. As to how they'd manage that while keeping it aesthetic, I'm not sure. The basic philosophy would be a computer small enough, light enough, and cheap enough that people would like to take it along and use it for most of their life. The MacBook Pro is great (I'm using one right now), but it's a pain worrying about it getting stolen, and it's light for what it is, but I only use a bit of its power when I'm out and about. The MacBook Air is way too expensive, and EEE is showing there is definitely a niche Apple could fill.
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Carlos Alberto Pinto Peixoto Bastos Santos said 12:54AM on 8-12-2008
Really nice the illustration of this article. It looks pretty realistic the chip. ;-)
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Amerist said 1:23AM on 8-12-2008
Elgato Turbo.264 x 10 FTW!
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Amerist said 1:26AM on 8-12-2008
Elgato turbo.264 x 10 FTW!
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luis said 2:05AM on 8-12-2008
Great illustration!!!!
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