Texas Instruments demos first 720p playback from a mobile phone

Texas Instruments demonstrated its first processor to enable high definition (720p) playback on mobile phones yesterday at 3GSM World Congress. The OMAP3430, first announced last year, is the first in TI's series of OMAP 3 processors and also first to include support for the OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics standard for 3D acceleration. The 3430 gets the muscle to move your HD files and 3D gaming from its embedded ARM Cortex-A8 processor, but from the specs it seems that the video portion is only currently supporting up to 1024 x 768 (XGA) output via composite or S-video connections. Still, with this power available, sometime in the future your common cellphone will be playing back HD on the go or outputting video to a big screen HDTV. We previously expected to see handsets based on the technology this year, but while TI is shipping samples of the processors now, don't expect your HD-capable cell to hit stores until early 2008.

[Shmoe @ Feb 13th 2007 12:50PM]

Why does HD matter on a screen that small?

[Jypson @ Feb 13th 2007 1:08PM]

I wonder if it's the mirrors inside.

[matto @ Feb 13th 2007 1:40PM]

...but from the specs it seems that the video portion is only currently supporting up to 1024 x> 768 (XGA) output via composite or S-video connections.

Wow, that would be super cool, if ntsc did 1024x768, in some bizzarro alternate universe. But here in this one, it can't. Good reporting!

[Tom Kelleher @ Feb 13th 2007 2:12PM]

Oh this is awesome, I was looking for a phone with worse battery life. When can I buy one? ...

[mr.fye @ Feb 13th 2007 2:19PM]

Exactly my thoughts Shmoe. Technology for it's own sake I guess. Or for marketings sake. Do you have HD on your phone? Didn't think so, loser.

Maybe, it could be useful if they get some really nice projector technology built into these things as well. Yeah, miniturize that DLP stuff TI.

[John Doe @ Feb 13th 2007 5:43PM]

Or you could use one of microvision or pvpro's mini laser projectors. I can see the marketing there:
Oh yea, my phone has an HD screen
Well guess what! MINE HAS FRICKING LAYZ0RZ!!!11!!one11!!!

[LJKelley @ Feb 13th 2007 2:24PM]

At what point does Technology go to far? I mean when will uping the stats stop selling phones? The screen is small so I doubt 720p is that important... and Ya I doubt I will go hooking my phone to every HDTV in site, proper phones are not sluts.

http://www.startblue.net

[kinshadow @ Feb 13th 2007 5:05PM]

What CODEC? From the article, it is worded in such a way that this could just be SD video upscaled to HD.

[angelsvairwaves1 @ Feb 13th 2007 5:10PM]

if only there was a screen that had that resolution..... and boy thats close to 1080i

[Jason @ Feb 13th 2007 5:32PM]

Jesus.

[Brien @ Feb 13th 2007 8:42PM]

Put it in the iPhone, plz?

[kevin @ Feb 13th 2007 11:41PM]

720p on a cell phone? as the spanish would say "Por que?"

It would be cool if these little suckers where puit in large screen HDTV's... maybe thinner TV's... cheaper... or less power hungry!

I dont know... I'm just saying!

[Dustin @ Feb 14th 2007 12:54AM]

ok..I'll..spell..it..out


The XGA resolution refers to the EXTERNAL output, not the SCREEN of the phone..sheesh, read people.

[Christophe @ Feb 14th 2007 5:05AM]

... and don't forget that the nokia internet tablets (N770 and N800) are based on the omap chips. So clearly OMAP is not limited to mobiles.

[D @ Feb 14th 2007 6:15AM]

There are two big ideas enabled by this technology. The first is that you can download HD movies from your DVR (e.g. using HS-USB) without transcoding (which takes hours and is quite error prone.) The second is that you can store HD movies on your mobile device for playback on an HDTV.

You can view the 720p content downsampled on the cell phone screen (where the benefit is that you've skipped the slow and error-prone transcoding process) or on a TV out connection (where the benefit is better resolution.)

OMAP3430 supports a 720p output (1280x720) for HD TV out.

[E71 @ Feb 15th 2007 8:19AM]

Holy crap, I want that in my next HTC PDA Phone!