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Raspberry Pi lands MPEG-2 and VC-1 decoding through personal licenses, H.264 encoding and CEC tag along
Making the Raspberry Pi affordable involved some tough calls, including the omission of MPEG-2 decoding. Licensing fees alone for the video software would have boosted the board's price by approximately 10 percent. Now, after many have made media centers with the hardware, the foundation behind the project has whipped up a solution to add the missing codec. For $3.16, users can purchase an individual MPEG-2 license for each of their boards on the organization's online store. Partial to Microsoft's VC-1 standard? Rights to using Redmond's codec can be purchased for $1.58. H.264 encoding is also in the cards since OpenMax components needed to develop applications with the functionality are now enabled by default in the device's latest firmware. With CEC support thrown into the Raspbmc, XBian and OpenELEC operating systems, a single IR remote can control a Raspberry Pi, a TV and other connected gadgets. If you're ready to load up your Pi with its newfound abilities, hit the source link below. Update: The Raspberry Pi Foundation let us know that US customers won't have to pay sales tax, which means patrons will only be set back $3.16 for MPEG-2 and $1.58 for VC-1 support, not $3.79 and $1.90 for the respective licenses. We've updated the post accordingly.
PS3 firmware 2.10 coming tomorrow, features DivX support
Still no in-game XMB news now, with the UK's PlayStation website spilling the bytes on a new PlayStation 3 firmware update. Scheduled for release on December 18th (we're confirming the date with SCEA), Firmware 2.10 joins the Xbox 360's Fall dashboard update in offering support for the pervasive DivX video codec. There are some caveats, however, as files that are copyright-protected, encoded with DivX 3.11 or larger than 2GB in size are not supported.Also added by the update is support for VC-1 (WMV) playback, Type 3 music bitmapping, Blu-ray Profile 1.1 and a "Voice Changer." You know, in case you thought your normal voice wasn't obnoxious enough in the hushed library that is the PS3's online scene. [Via PS3 Fanboy]
Broadcom announces HD cablemodem-on-a-chip
Broadcom has announced a single-chip solution for DOCSIS cable modems that will combine the usual data and video with high-definition decoding for MPEG-4 AVC, VC1, and MPEG-2 formats. The chip also supports Dolby Digital , MP3, and AAC audio. It is intended for manufacturers to use in building cable modems that have a single integrated chipset with both the video and data decoding built in.This should open the door for both built-in PVR functionality, as well as allowing for possible IPTV use. The modem could download content directly from the internet using the data services and then decode any of the new compression formats used in Blu-ray and HD DVD.Manufacturers are quickly moving to embrace these newer codecs for compressing video over cable and the internet (and satellite), and it's good to see it becoming commoditized to the point where it's being built into a single chip. Will we see the cable companies get into FiOS-like content delivery soon?
