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Intel mulling WebM hardware acceleration in Atom CE4100 chip

Hey Google, shall we try the other box? Maybe it has hardware acceleration built in for your new WebM video format? Intel's Wilfred Martis has told IDG News that his company is keeping a close eye on Google's new VP8-based format, and should it prove popular enough, hardware acceleration for it will be built into the CE4100 and other Atom chips headed to TVs and overpowered cable boxes in the future:

Just like we did with other codecs like MPEG2, H.264 & VC1, if VP8 establishes itself in the Smart TV space, we will add it to our [hardware] decoders.

Not exactly astonishing news, as Google TV is still likely to proceed on those chips with WebM getting decoded by software in the mean time, but at least Intel's absenteeism from the WebM hardware partner list can now be explained as simple precaution, rather than some deeper division between the companies.