Apple planning H.264 hardware in all Macs?

At least that's the word from columnist Robert X. Cringely, who says he's heard a rumor on the subject, that he believes to be "a fact," that has simply yet to be confirmed. Supposedly, Apple will not only be including hardware-based H.264 video decoding across its entire line of Macs, but hardware encoding as well, which would significantly reduce the load on the computers' processors while still churning out high quality video. The H.264 video encoding would also have the added benefit of greatly reducing the file size of the captured videos, making them ready made for spreading across the Internet. According to Cringely, the cost of the across the board upgrade would set Apple back upwards of $500 million, but he seems quite confident that Apple's ready to take that gamble sometime this year. That would seem to jive with at least one other Apple rumor we've heard, which touted updates of an unspecified sort to all Mac lines by June -- although, as with all of these, we likely won't know for sure until we get the word from the man himself.

[Jon Acheson @ Mar 9th 2007 12:51PM]

This would make the most sense if it was HD video support across their entire line.

That wasn't what Cringely was talking about, though, and I wouldn't hold my breath for anything above SD.

[Jeff @ Mar 9th 2007 8:30PM]

@ Jon Acheson

er... h.264 does HD, SD, QVGA... it does it all.

so - ....you dont know what you're talking about.

My old junky g4 can already decode 720P (and guess what - it's h.264) and if i had a hardware decoder to offload the work from my processor, i'm sure i could do 1080P.

I also need to encode my 1080i projects into h.264, and that takes a VERY LONG time on the dual core intel at my work.

if this were true, i'd be jazzed. It's about time apple starts putting video decoder hardware in their machines, and with anything involving video, it'll set products apart from generic PCs all the more.

(of course if Apple DOES do this, in a few years, it'll become standard practice for all decent hardware manufacturers.)

[Language Geek @ Mar 9th 2007 12:58PM]

>That would seem to jive with at least one other Apple rumor we've heard

jibe, not jive

http://m-w.com/
jibe
Function: intransitive verb
Inflected Form(s): jibed; jib·ing
Etymology: origin unknown
Date: 1813
: to be in accord : agree

[Mark @ Mar 9th 2007 1:17PM]

Can someone explain how hardware encoding 'has the added benefit of shrinking the video file size'? I imagine that if it's capable of HD video encoding (which I doubt), the file size of a typical HD movie is still going to be huge so we won't see HD video 'spreading all over the internet' any time soon. Also, if it's just SD, who cares?

[KC @ Mar 9th 2007 1:20PM]

Apple will be the next platform for pirating videos?

[Chris @ Mar 9th 2007 1:24PM]

Any chance this could lead to recording tv shows? I know Apple wants to sell you episodes, but I think a DVR feature on new Macs would help AppleTV.

[Leonard Nimrod @ Mar 10th 2007 2:33PM]

Chris wrote: "Any chance this could lead to recording tv shows? I know Apple wants to sell you episodes, but I think a DVR feature on new Macs would help AppleTV."

A DVR feature that works with AppleTV is the reason I bought one. I use a simple USB2.0 tuner from Elgato that comes with their DVR software. It encodes in H2.64 and loads into iTunes. Since I'm using my Mac I save lots of money over having a dedicated DVR appliance.

[Andrew Jones @ Mar 9th 2007 1:27PM]

I'm wondering where he gets the $50 million cost? I mean - even if they sold 100,000 computers this year, that's a $500 charge PER COMPUTER! Perhaps he's including R&D costs, retooling costs, and setup fees, in which case it may be $50M this year, but it would be closer to $500K next.

[syadasti @ Mar 9th 2007 1:30PM]

Most likely a trivial upgrade to the latest video chipset from ATI or nVidia and Apple is trying to pass it off as some huge innovation. Wow what an innovation, they are going to put a new chipset in their new PCs...

[tim @ Mar 9th 2007 2:37PM]

Umm, Andrew, 100,000? This year? "Even if"?

They sell about 1.2 to 2 MILLION Computers per QUARTER!

I think it was 1981 that Apple last sold 100,000 units per year. If even then...

[Siva @ Mar 9th 2007 2:40PM]

This is Cringley's wishlist not a rumor or fact. Cringley has a wild imagination and makes up stuff that he wants to happen. These are nothing but wishlists.

Also, to the person that said 100k computers, Apple sells about 5 million computers a year.

[jabar @ Mar 9th 2007 3:12PM]

When will we see BlueRay Drive in all Macs??

[David Li @ Mar 9th 2007 3:32PM]

This might be more interesting if Apple would add better H264 support in quicktime. AFAIK, Quicktime 7.0 has the slowest implementation ever. Compare that to CoreAVC, which can sometimes even beat hardware decoders. CoreAVC also supports high profile features like pyramid B-Frames, CABAC, etc...

[The Jeremy @ Mar 9th 2007 4:27PM]

I wonder if this chip is custom silicon designed by Apple, or if it is being purchased from some other company.

Two potential chips are on my mind:

*The decoder chip from SigmaDesigns that will be showing up in most of the 2ndgen Blu-Ray players.

*IBM/Toshiba/Sony Cell. I would think Sony would bend over backwards to get other companies to order Cell chips so that the manufacturing costs will go down rapidly. Granted, production yields have been an issue in the recent past. The upside is that the Cell has been great for decoding Blu-Ray movies on the PS3 and better in comparison to the decoder chip from Broadcom found in the Samsung Blu-Ray player (or the Toshiba HD DVD players for that matter). However, in fairness, there's only a few Blu-Ray titles on the market that use the H.264 AVC version of MPEG4 while the majority use VC-1 or the older MPEG2.

[Jeff @ Mar 9th 2007 4:29PM]

H264 encoding is beyond set standards of size, frame-rate, etc. So encoding would/could be standard-def or high def.

Ninety minutes of DVCProHD (1080p at 24fps) is about +60gb (and that's already compressed). You could distribute an entire HD movie using a standard DVD running a 1080p H264 movie -of course it can't play in a set-top player, only on a computer.

My guess (if this is true) is it would not be part of the video card itself, but a seperate piece of dedicated hardware the way, say, a sound card or a wifi card is integrated.

I think this would be an amazing step forward -even if it's just seamless in the background.

[The Jeremy @ Mar 9th 2007 4:38PM]

And of course, the AppleTV could certainly use one of those chips to help out that PentiumM it has at its core.

This mysterious decoder chip would probably do the H.264 decoding at much less wattage than the CPU too.

[L. M. Lloyd @ Mar 9th 2007 5:10PM]

So Apple decides to support Avivo (ATI) or Pure Video (nVidia) and this is a news story? Boy it must be great to work in the Apple press office.

[syadasti @ Mar 9th 2007 8:41PM]

Jeff-

"generic PCs" have had hardware based H.264 for a while now - its called Avivo (ATI) or Pure Video (nVidia) and there are various encoders on some cards from those and other brands too - Rage Theater, etc...

This is just like most new technology - ie MP3 players, 64-bit PCs, or the "Superdrive" for example...technology that was available elsewhere first, usually by a long shot. Apple just has better BS marketing, there is no true innovation.

[jbulava @ Mar 9th 2007 8:46PM]

Ok, don't yell at me if this doesn't make sense, it's just an idea! Would it be beneficial for Apple to put this encoding/decoding hardware in the actual cinema displays? I would assume there might be some overhead getting the data out to the monitor as I don't know the bandwidth differences, but it just seemed possible in my mind since the displays haven't been updated in awhile and who says that a display just needs to display...although that would hike up the costs I'm sure.

[Jon Acheson @ Mar 9th 2007 11:04PM]

Jeff -

Actually, I do know what I'm talking about.

H.264 is just a digital video codec, it's a flavor of MPEG-4. It's not a hardware standard. Different hardware implementations may not support all of the resolutions the video codec supports. In particular, outputting 1080P right now requires either specialized hardware, or a high-end processor and video card. If their new chip can output 1080P, it would be a win for Apple, and if it can encode 1080P, it would be amazing. On the other hand, if it only encodes 480P, it would be useful, but nothing special.

[Tom @ Mar 10th 2007 8:16AM]

@ jbulava

You make a good point and would certainly be a nice idea but I doubt that Apple would ever do it that way. I expect thsi would be a loss leader. If they get hardware decoding in all their machines then they've just created a huge market to sell downloadable HD movies to. People tend to update their computer more often than the display so if they just bung the chip straight in the Macs its a far quicker process.

[yasker @ Mar 10th 2007 11:59AM]

有点搞笑，当年vcd刚出来的时候，486是没法看的，只能有视频解压卡。而586时代，超级解霸的出现基本上可以不用视频解压就看vcd了，后来的dvd时代在pc上展开的时候，pc已经有足够的能力用软件解压了。毕竟硬件的发展速度是很快的，H.264虽然播放有点吃力，但是用不了多久这种问题顺其自然就解决了，要Apple去花这个冤枉钱，怎么可能的事情。而且现在H.264的解压算法也在改进，独立的GPU也越来越多的出现让图形处理更多的依赖GPU、加个GPU还差不多，为了H.264加块芯片，你当Apple是冤大头啊!

[Jeff @ Mar 10th 2007 12:19PM]

yasker said: "有点搞笑，当年vcd刚出来的时候，486是没法看的，只能有视频解压卡。而586时代，超级解霸的出现基本上可以不用视频解压就看vcd了，后来的dvd时代在pc上展开的时候，pc已经有足够的能力用软件解压了。毕竟硬件的发展速度是很快的，H.264虽然播放有点吃力，但是用不了多久这种问题顺其自然就解决了，要Apple去花这个冤枉钱，怎么可能的事情。而且现在H.264的解压算法也在改进，独立的GPU也越来越多的出现让图形处理更多的依赖GPU、加个GPU还差不多，为了H.264加块芯片，你当Apple是冤大头啊!"

I couldn't have said it better myself. Especially the last part!

[Jeff @ Mar 10th 2007 10:39PM]

@ Jon

depends on what you mean by encode. With Quicktime Pro 7, an old G3 or old PC running 500mhz can encode 1080p —it'll just take a decade. Realtime is different of course. Realtime encoding of 1080p H.264 would take serious hardware and would only allow CBR. I'm biassed. I like 2-pass VBR.

H.264 is such an efficient MPEG4 codec it's become the standard in so many areas as Jeremy has stated.

I don't think this is a poop-your-pants-worthy groundbreaking "invention" —more like a common-sense implementation. Making their entire platform of computers (from the minis to the pros) playback H.264 with little CPU-usage and dramatically cutting down encoding times is note-worthy.

It's not an invention, just smart implementation. Something other computer companies haven't implemented (yet).

It's all about Steve's phrase "it just works." Webcams are HARDLY a new thing, but implementing them across an entire computer line (except the Pros) is —and iChat using H.264. The inferred remote is nothing new. Heck, nearly everything in the iLife suite is "nothing new", but innovative implementations of concepts is really Apple's strength.

The new things Apple does often seem like "duh" items. They just do those "duh" things really well. And soon you see other computer companies trying to implement the same ideas.