Broadcom's Crystal HD tech to liven up HD capabilities of N450-based netbooks
By Darren Murph 
posted December 22nd 2009 4:05AM
posted December 22nd 2009 4:05AM
posted December 22nd 2009 4:05AM
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wasn't pinetrail supposed to allow absurdly thin form factors? i'm still waiting to see something i'd actually lay cash down for.
@Eraser - exactly. I'm waiting for second-gen, properly redesigned Pinetrail netbooks, cause the ones shown until now are basically just older chassis with new internals...
I mean, if Sony manages to create a 14mm thin netbook with the older, more power-sucking Atom platform, it should be possible for other manufacturers to create sub-20mm thin Pinetrail-based ones at reasonable price...
So would this be replacing integrated graphics or running alongside them?
@Mitch
Alongside, i think its just a HD video accelerator.
...and it kills the battery in 3 mins and 51 seconds
...funny ...they really should have mentioned something about it...
Something you didn't mention was WMP12 support which will be handy although I hope they are exposing the Crystal HD to DXVA so any player can use it.
http://www.broadcom.com/products/Consumer-Electronics/Netbook-and-Nettop-Solutions/BCM70015
@(Unverified)
Yeah but that hasn't been the case in the past -- you would need to use a specific media player in order to have support. Lets hope for the best though.
I could've sworn I've seen this somewhere... oh yeah! I remember now!
From the NEW Dell Mini 10 press release:
"Bundles with Broadcom Crystal HD for smooth HD playback coming in Q1"
Sounds cool, sign me up!
Just wondering what's the unit cost of this Broadcom chip and an Ion chip? Might be interesting to see whether this is or Ion is better value, considering Ion is a full DX10-capable GPU rather than just a video accelerator.
@r3loaded - the thing is, do you need anything of the additional things Ion offers? Gaming sucks on a netbook since the CPU is simply not up to the task, and while CUDA-accelerated apps would be a nice bonus, there are only a few, and those are usually not freeware (and I'm not paying for a simple video transcoder).
The (by *far*) most important task for Ion is making HD video playback possible on Atom-powered machines, and *if* the Broadcom chip does that at a fraction of the price/power consumption, why not?
@NewL
"The (by *far*) most important task for Ion is making HD video playback possible on Atom-powered machines, and *if* the Broadcom chip does that at a fraction of the price/power consumption, why not?"
I think what he's asking is, is it really a fraction of the cost? Obviously to add the card vs. buying an Ion platform, the answer is yes. But when buying it included in a netbook, is there a large price difference?
This is awesome, especially because the latest flash player beta already is hardware accelerated by these things. Now if only intel's integrated GPUs didn't suck so much ass we needed a dedicated video decode chip for Flash. Oh wait...
As long as it sucks a good amount less juice then an Ion and can allow me to enjoy some videos on the go (gaming need not apply) I'll be a happy camper.
I would buy this product if I can use it with my favourite media players.
If I have to use some crappy proprietary player, i'll pass.
@(Unverified) Did you notice that the regular netbook uses Windows Media Player, yet the Broadcom-equipped netbook uses an undisclosed media player? I won't believe this hype until a test is done with identical hardware and software, only with the Crystal HD being the difference.
@(Unverified) : I'll buy this if they provide Linux drivers for this. no way I'll run Windows on a Netbook.
@(Unverified) the player used in the video was most likely ArcSoft's TotalMedia player which comes bundled with this chip.
Highlights/Key Facts:
-- Broadcom Crystal HD technology gives netbook users a rich multimedia
experience by providing cost-effective, quality playback of HD video.
-- Broadcom's BCM70015 single chip Crystal HD solution provides
manufacturers with a highly integrated low power, low cost solution that
addresses one of the key performance challenges on netbook platforms:
quality playback of online streaming HD video.
-- The BCM70015 single chip high-definition advanced media processor also:
-- Provides software support for Adobe® Flash® Player (v10.1),
Windows Media® Player (v12), as well as support for other
third-party media players including both commercial and open-source.
-- Leverages Broadcom's proven set-top box (STB) and consumer media
player technologies to provide one of the industry's best HD media
playback experiences on low cost netbooks.
-- Is targeted for PC/x86 applications that include the playback of
streaming video, Blu-ray Disc®, file-based content and broadcast
(and other TV sources).
-- Is perfect for low cost netbooks, but is also designed for use in
notebooks as well as small form factor (SFF) and slim desktops.
-- Supports standard definition (SD) and HD multi-format video decode
of industry standard codecs (H.264/AVC, MPEG-2, VC-1, WMV9, MPEG-4,
DivX®, Xvid and AVS), enabling users to enjoy a mobile media
experience with no frame drops or jitter, even under a heavy CPU
load.
-- Is optimized for motherboard designs and is also available in the
PCI Express mini-card module format.
@erlik
Yeah right, do you think they will publically open up their API for their hardware media decoded? No way. Quallcomm and Broadcomm in the past have been EXTREMELY secretive when it comes to those types of things.
@erlik They had better open source the drivers if they want to get in ChromeOS netbooks
"near flawless" is marketspeak for "good but WITH FLAWS"
anyone else annoyed with this?
@(Unverified)
Yes, but I can't figure out what that might mean. My best guess is that it's not actually fast enough to handle HD content at its highest bitrate such as high-action scenes, where it might drop a frame here and/or cause an artifact here and there. Any other ideas as to what that might mean?
there has been users including myself waiting for drivers for Apple TV as this card supports mini PCIe
install: http://rufn.it/aTV/
awaiting drivers: http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=55042
Uhm, HELLO? Omap3 and Omap4 can do this already with PowerVR!!!
Netbooks need to get away from x86 already and switch to better SoCs designed for mobile devices. Omap3 can already do 720p video encoding and decoding just fine, and Omap4 will be able to do 1080p.
Uhm, HELLO?
Most netbook users prefer using Windows. Windows requires x86. Say what you wish about Linux but the OEM's have seen more machines with linux returned on them than with Windows. The consumers have decided, they want Windows not Linux - so the idea people are forced to buy Windows is a crock, it's a choice for the majority to use Windows just like it's your choice to use Linux.
@fatslug
Guess you've never heard of windows CE then.
Anyways, there are alot of Android netbooks coming out in europe and asia, and I believe once Symbian^4 is complete, there will be quite a few Symbian netbooks as well....and plus there's tons of Linux distros that were designed for ARM cpus. RISC processing on a netbook makes a ton more sense. The battery life could be doubled, if not trippled, and there are already plenty of applications for all of those platforms.
@(Unverified) Will Omap4 render an Oface in full 1080P?
@THJ
*cricket* *cricket* *tumbleweed goes by*
@fatslug
I wish my 1005HA came pre-loaded with a decent Linux distribution instead of XP. Does that make me a non-consumer?
great idea, to put a dedicated media processor chip inside netbooks. it could come from Sigma designs or as here Broadcom or from Realtek. to have the media processor just handling decoding of mepge2/4 streams of video and also maybe a DSP for HD Sound would be a good cheap gift for net top users. No need to use a high end/high cost / high power usage CPU/GPU for playing video
HD is 720; F(Full)HD is 1080; More than >95% of netbooks use 1024x600 or 1024x576 displays. So, do you get HD video with missing rows? So, even if they can PLAY HD or FHD content, it will not LOOK like HD or FHD on the display. SImply not possible.
@bumpermeat Some people like to output video smoothly to another display... lets not forget that this will also support flash HW acceleration.
What's the power consumption of the Broadcom chip? The Z-series Atom chip with the GMA 500 (PowerVR) has H.264 acceleration already. I've played 1080p videos @ 20 Mbps smoothly with this setup. The US15W plus Z5XX Atom has a TDP of less than 5 W. It's nice not needing to transcode my videos when I want to watch them on the go.
@comments
From an article on BCM70015 power consumption:
"The Broadcom BCM70015 chip will improve video performance and supports AVC, H.264, VC-1, WMV9 and MPEG2 standards along with a number of operating systems (Windows XP, Windows 7 and Linux). The chip is very power efficient and consumes 30mW at idle. This increases to 500mW when watching 720p HD videos and 1W when watching 1080p content."
Pretty efficient!