Digital TV Boxes via Android

[dlewis]

We finally might be able to control our TV's the right way:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/googles-android-jumps-t-the-living-room/?hpw

http://www.mips.com/news-events/newsroom/?i=43180

[totallymaxed]

We finally might be able to control our TV's the right way:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/googles-android-jumps-t-the-living-room/?hpw

http://www.mips.com/news-events/newsroom/?i=43180

Agreed this is potentially very big news indeed...especially if it opens up access to the GPU's on MIPS based STB devices. I am a bit sceptical about the graphics driver situation...cant see any of the MIPS partners GPL'ing there code. But worst case if they provide supported binary drivers then we could deliver a full MD with full hardware acceleration.

Andrew

[dlewis]

I was looking around... Which STB's does MIPS make in the US and for which providers?

[totallymaxed]

I was looking around... Which STB's does MIPS make in the US and for which providers?

Below is a non-exhaustive list of MIPS based STB vendors/products;

    *  Hughes Network Systems HDVR2 DirecTV DVR with TiVo
    * Motorola DCT 2500, DCT 2600 and DCT-5100 Series
    * Pace's Pace 500 series, used by Time Warner Cable
    * Pioneer's Voyager 3000 cable set-top box
    * Scientific Atlanta 3250HD and 4200HD models
    * Sony's CoCoon PVR
    * TiVo Series 2
    * Galaxis LinuxTV model
    * RCA's RW2100 Internet receiver
    * Echostar STB

Andrew

[dlewis]

I'm sure they probably do the Scientific Atlantic 8300HD as well... This is great new because they provide the software for a lot of the US based STB used by the major cable and satellite providers... We'll see what happens.

[dlewis]

wow....

http://www.mips.com/news-events/newsroom/index.cfm?i=43210

http://www.slashgear.com/android-1080p-set-top-box-prototype-gets-demo-2854237/

[totallymaxed]

wow....

http://www.mips.com/news-events/newsroom/index.cfm?i=43210

http://www.slashgear.com/android-1080p-set-top-box-prototype-gets-demo-2854237/

Yep...very exciting news. This is the key paragraph in the join press release;

To enable Android to run on an HD screen rather than the small screen of a mobile handset, Sigma and MIPS undertook enhancements to Android libraries and the MIPS architecture. Sigma Designs extended libraries within Android to support hardware graphics acceleration and hardware decoding to take advantage of their SoC capabilities for HD. MIPS Technologies is also making performance optimizations specifically for the MIPS32® architecture. This optimized code will be available in the future as part of the publicly-available Android on MIPS code.

The last sentence being the particularly interesting bit... lets hope this is sooner rather than later :-)

All the best

Andrew

[dlewis]

And it begins... Android based STP: http://www.youtube.com/user/MIPSTechnologies#p/u/6/ND9Dqt0QShM