Will Palm Use New Toshiba Video Chip?

Posted By: Ed Tuesday, January 16, 2001 10:15:38 AM

Yesterday, Toshiba announced its TC35273XB chip, which has 12 MB of embedded DRAM memory and an encoder and decoder for MPEG-4. It was designed to allow handhelds to display good-quality compressed video with minimal battery drain. There have been no announcements which companies might use the new chip, which won't go into production until the third quarter of this year.

While the potential for wireless handheld users to see video of movies, news, weather, and traffic reports is great, faster wireless connections are necessary for this to become really useful.

"Video is the next popular craze in the mobile handset market. MPEG-4 technology is essential to the encoding and decoding of streaming media for next-generation cellular," stated Michelle Abraham, senior analyst, multimedia, Cahners In-Stat Group.

The 12 MB of memory will greatly reduce it's power drain. "We know that battery life is always key with portable devices," said Andrew Burt, director, TAEC wireless market development. "So we designed this chip to specifically address that. Our leadership in embedded DRAM allows us to offer significantly lower power dissipation."

The TC35273XB performs 15 frames per second into a QCIF (176 x 144 pixels) video display, along with an audio CODEC that can support multiple audio CODECs including Adaptive Multi Rate (AMR) speech CODEC at a clock frequency of 70-megahertz (MHz). Three signal processing units, an MPEG-4 video CODEC, an audio CODEC/decoder, and a multiplex/demultiplex unit are integrated on the single-chip.

The video core consists of a 70 MHz, 16-bit RISC processor and dedicated hardware accelerators that allow programmability while delivering high performance and low-power dissipation. The firmware program for the RISC processor is downloaded into the embedded DRAM before beginning any operation. Additional applications, such as H.263, are performed by using the appropriate firmware.

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Uh, no!

I.M. Anonymous @ 1/16/2001 10:42:24 AM #

Palm won't use this technology. It's too radical and doesn't fit into the Zen religion. I always laugh whenever someone asks what new technology will go into new Palm models. The answer is easy: NOTHING! It should be obvious to everyone that Palm will never add new features to their devices, and that will never change.

Same old boring Palm!

RE: Uh, no!

I.M. Anonymous @ 1/16/2001 11:37:04 AM #

wish it wasn't true, but it sure looks that way.

ummm

scaught @ 1/16/2001 11:31:05 AM #

"video is the next popular craze in the handheld market" - get off the crack. while video on a handheld may be cool, i dont think its what everybody cares about seeing next. its hardly useful for anything more than a "ooh, i didnt think a handheld could do that".

RE: ummm

I.M. Anonymous @ 1/16/2001 11:38:42 AM #

What planet are you from? I am a lazy bastard, like the rest of the human race, so if that means i can see and hear the news each morning rather than read it, then you bet i want it. (ok so we need faster wireles networks, but they are comming.)

plus what about games, I like them, I doubt you get too much time from your off planet crack induced delusions to actually play them, but better graphics would help there too. If palm listen to too many loosers like you they will eventually be lost in the dust by pocket PC, and that would be really really sad.

RE: ummm

scaught @ 1/16/2001 7:48:24 PM #

wait, im sorry. video on a handheld is hardly useful for more than "ooh, i didnt think a handheld could do that", and lazy bastards. try not to read too much there, sparky.

RE: ummm

scaught @ 1/16/2001 7:48:24 PM #

wait, im sorry. video on a handheld is hardly useful for more than "ooh, i didnt think a handheld could do that", and lazy bastards. try not to read too much there, sparky.

RE: ummm

I.M. Anonymous @ 1/18/2001 9:52:31 AM #

Huh!!!

loose the crack friend, calm down, and try really hard to make an inteligent response. When you do, try to post it only once. OK.

RE: ummm

scaught @ 1/18/2001 1:22:11 PM #

wow. that was really tricky of me to be able to post both the messages at exactly the same second. dont you wonder how i did that?

you want an intelligent response? one that spells words properly and uses the english language the way it was intended? i think i did that quite well. as for your response, well, i think it speaks for itself. better graphics would help with games, that has nothing to do with this chips ability to play mpeg encoded files. next time, you should also try and stay on topic.

[ No Subject ]

I.M. Anonymous @ 1/16/2001 11:04:32 PM #

sounds useless

Say no to Palm video.

Alan Lee @ 1/17/2001 4:40:25 AM #

Let's recall the nature of Palm and that of video. Video can attract no one if there is no audio effect and colorless. If you want to see movie on your way, a mobile DVD Player would do. This stuff might fit in WinCE Machines, but not in Palm.

soon, but not today

I.M. Anonymous @ 1/21/2001 12:24:16 PM #

This technology sounds promising, I hope that I see it in future Palms. however, I see it in 5 years, when it can fit the form factor and price range of today's III & V lines.

useless

I.M. Anonymous @ 1/30/2001 10:23:02 PM #

yeah I am sure that when you wrote this it sounded like a great idea but the fact is that the people at palm have enough to worry about without video codecs. This article also doesn't take into account the fact that a large majority of palm users are still using 16 bit greyscale displays and this is absolutley useless to all of them ass video looks terrible in greyscale. Furthermore no matter how power efficient they say these things are the fact is that it will still kill batteries. We can use laptops as an example, they have new processors designed for mpbile low power use and they still kill huge btteries in an hour and a half, o a PDA this will be magnified and before you through, the batteries that are supposed to last you a month will last three hours. Lastly with a PDA's memory you can store no more than two minutes of video with sound even if there is nothing else on it. There will be no bringing family movies into the office or any of that junk and wireless access is nowhere near fast enough to provide smooth video transfer.