[mythtv-users] Interesting Cringely article on possible Apple PVRs

[Brian Wood]

On Mar 9, 2007, at 5:51 PM, Jason Sullivan wrote:

>
>
> Which is why it amazes me that nobody seems to make a TV In/Out card
> with a general purpose DSP, GPU, or even an FPGA on it.  Sure, it's a
> little more expensive, but it's future-proof (well, future-resistant),
> and those processors (or random gates) can run (or be configured to
> run) codecs much faster than a regular CPU.

Actually I think it would be a *lot* more expensive. Comparing the  
costs of the different type of devices in single-unit quantities does  
not tell the real story of how cheap the mass-produced non- 
programmable units truly are in large quantities. Most of the cost  
for small quantities are for packaging, inventorying, documentation  
and handling.

>
> I'm already an nVidia customer for life, but what would make them
> unimpeachable is for me to be able load an arbitrary video codec to
> run on their GPU.

Not going to happen. Just knowing the format that the codec(s) had to  
be in would probably reveal more about how their GPUs operate then  
they are willing to divulge.

nVidia does have some great products but they are still constrained  
by commercial considerations.

But I'd certainly love to see it happen.