Intel's
Santa Rosa mobile platform will get a high definition upgrade in the second half of this year when it integrates
dedicated hardware decoding from Broadcom to support
HD DVD and
Blu-ray playback. The extra processing power will let notebooks keep running their Windows
Vista Aero experience -- which currently takes a major hit -- while
playing high-def discs without relying on more expensive GPUs from
NVIDIA or
ATI. We know Toshiba is going all HD DVD in its laptops later this year, and we won't be surprised to see more manufacturers throwing in blue laser options across the line. The manufacturer told Ars Technica that future upgrades to the Santa Rosa chipset should include driver updates later this year, and DirectX10 support in 2008.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
paloooz @ Jun 7th 2007 6:49PM
I'm guessing this is why the new MacBook Pros don't have new optical format drives.
Eric @ Jun 7th 2007 7:00PM
Hey! I live there!
Jacques67 @ Jun 7th 2007 8:12PM
LOL what are the odds, me too! And I thought it was a small town.
Jeff Doyle @ Jun 7th 2007 8:36PM
What up guys, I live in Santa Rosa!
Am I gonna see any of you in line for the iphone?
Jon DunB @ Jun 7th 2007 9:15PM
I was born in Santa Rosa. Moved when I was 10 though.
Kevin @ Jun 7th 2007 9:15PM
Hey you guys get a room!
impressme @ Jun 7th 2007 9:27PM
Yeah I hope to see this Broadcom chip in the next Macbook Pro revision for Q4. Maybe Apple will give users a choice between Blu-ray and HD-DVD in the Apple Store ... wouldn't that be nice. OS X 10.5 would be released by then and we'd have our hands on ZFS to play with too.
Good times ahead!
>:o)
Kevin @ Jun 7th 2007 9:54PM
why would apple supply hd-dvd drives if they are on the board of directors for blu-ray?
ITR @ Jun 7th 2007 10:40PM
Apple is also on the DVD forum.
And FCP and Leo both support HD and BD formats.
I believe a hybrid drive is coming for Macs.
impressme @ Jun 7th 2007 11:07PM
I thought hybrid too, it'd be a smart move quite frankly. The best of both worlds.
Wes Felter @ Jun 9th 2007 10:04PM
The current MacBook Pro is already powerful enough to play Blu-ray or HD DVD, so why would Apple add a decoder chip?
impressme @ Jun 7th 2007 10:15PM
Apple might be on the board of directors for Blu-ray, but HD-DVD is supported in Final Cut Studio 2 as well, so why wouldn't they give such an option? I love Mac's but I sure don't love Blu-ray. If I'm stuck with a Blu-ray drive only option in a Mac some day, so be it. It will only be used for backing up data anyway. I'll stick with HD-DVD for movie content TYVM.
mtarascio @ Jun 8th 2007 1:05AM
I'm more interested in it's application for tiny HTPCs than for laptops. Great to hear this happening, looks like nvidia, ati/amd and intel are all looking to introduce hardware decoding.