Saturday, March 10, 2007
Macs To Get H.264 Hardware Encoding and Decoding Chip?
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 04:04 PM
"I'm not sure of the real reason why we haven't seen widespread video-decoding hardware in personal computers, which have largely used decoding software, instead. Maybe the reason is economic (save the $7) or maybe it is political (Microsoft or maybe Apple are for some reason opposed to hardware decoding)...Now comes the rumor I have heard, that I believe to be a fact, that has simply yet to be confirmed. I have heard that Apple plans to add hardware video decoding to ALL of its new computers beginning fairly soon, certainly this year...WHY Apple would add H.264 video-decoding hardware to its entire line of PCs comes down to supporting iTunes and any similar video distribution efforts Apple may spring on us. By going with a chip, Apple ensures the same base performance level from every machine it sells, from the lowliest Mac Mini right up to the mightiest four-core Mac Pro...This will change everything. Soon even the lowliest Mac will be able to effortlessly record in background one or more video signals while the user runs TurboTax on the screen. Macs will become superb DVR machines with TiVo-like functionality yet smaller file sizes than any TiVo box could ever produce. In a YouTube world, the new Macs will be a boon to user-produced video, which will, in turn, promote the H.264 standard."
Apologies for the cut-up quote, but you should really go read the original article to get the full scope of what Cringely is talking about. I've often wondered why computers didn't have on-board video encoding/decoding hardware - I think the industry has always felt that throwing more CPU muscle at the problem was the solution, but it's hard to beat dedicated hardware that's really good at one thing. Apple could have an interesting advantage here - I wonder how the Windows side of the PC industry will respond?
Apologies for the cut-up quote, but you should really go read the original article to get the full scope of what Cringely is talking about. I've often wondered why computers didn't have on-board video encoding/decoding hardware - I think the industry has always felt that throwing more CPU muscle at the problem was the solution, but it's hard to beat dedicated hardware that's really good at one thing. Apple could have an interesting advantage here - I wonder how the Windows side of the PC industry will respond?
