Windows Mobile, Linux, and Symbian operating systems will all be supported by the new codecs, Aricent said. However, the company provided no information on whether the codecs could be incorporated into existing phone designs by manufacturers, or installed on them by consumers, for that matter.
Ironically, TI itself just announced the OMAP3440, which adds HD video support but otherwise appears to differ little from the OMAP3430. Based on an 800MHz
ARM Cortex-A8 core, the OMAP3440 integrates graphics hardware claimed capable of supporting HD video, a shared memory controller, several external Flash and RAM interfaces, and a variety of on-chip peripheral interfaces. For more information and a comparison with the OMAP3430, see our earlier coverage,
here.
Chip vendors appear to believe there will be high consumer demand for HD-capable phones, and have rushed to provide ARM-based SoCs that can suport them. In addition to the OMAP3440, HD-capable SoCs announced this week include ST's
STn8820 and Nvidia's
APX 2500.
While the manufacturers mentioned above referenced "phones" in their data sheets and other publicity, it may be more realistic to expect their new SoCs in hard-disk equipped personal media players (PMPs) initially, thanks to storage constraints. Three hours of 720p video compressed using MPEG-4 requires 8GB of storage, according to Sanyo, whose
VPC-HD2 camcorder records 720p (1280 x 720 pixel) video to SDHC flash memory cards.
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