While the market for consumers who might want to watch streaming video or listen to streaming audio on their wireless devices is debatable, chip manufacturers are going ahead with plans to integrate streaming content technology into chips in case that demand materializes.
Toshiba Corp. unveiled the second member of its Moving Pictures Experts Group-4 line up with the TC35273XB single chip decoder, integrating an MPEG-4 Coder-Decoder with 12-megabits of embedded Dynamic Random Access Memory designed to deliver a low-power, end-to-end solution with encoding, transmission and decoding functionality supporting the MPEG-4 industry standard.
That standard includes portable multimedia devices with video data rates of between 20 kilobits per second and 6 megabits per second.
“Toshiba’s solution stands out because our leadership in embedded DRAM allows us to offer significantly lower power dissipation-a critical feature in the wireless communications arena,” explained Andrew Burt, wireless market development director for Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. “Our new MPEG-4 CODEC opens the doors for designers to create advanced wireless communications products such as mobile interactive multimedia devices, digital television or remote security and surveillance.”
Similar to the MPEG-4 encoder Toshiba introduced late last year, the MPEG-4 decoder performs 15 frames per second into a 176-pixel by 144-pixel video display. The decoder also includes an audio CODEC designed to support multiple audio CODECs including Adaptive Multi Rate speech CODEC at a clock frequency of 70 megahertz.
Toshiba said the main advantage to the single chipset is the embedded DRAM design allowing power consumption of 80 milliwatts, potentially doubling the battery life in a mobile videophone compared with the same phone using off-chip memory.
While the solution could allow consumers in the United States to stream video and audio over their wireless devices, Burt admitted there was probably more potential for these applications in Japan where consumers rely more on their wireless devices for video and audio applications.
Burt also noted the solution may be more valuable to personal digital assistant users in the United States, who could use the larger screens on those devices to e-mail photos and short movie clips to family and friends.
Toshiba’s MPEG-4 release comes on the heels of fellow chip manufacturer Texas Instruments agreement with RealNetworks Inc. incorporating RealPlayer technology onto TI’s Open Multimedia Applications Platform for wireless devices.
TI said the integration will allow mobile device users to watch streaming audio and video using RealNetworks proprietary format, which has made a name for itself on the wired Internet. In addition, TI claims its low-power DSPs will increase battery life of Internet audio players by 70 percent compared with competing technologies.
While Toshiba’s and TI’s chip technologies will compete against each other in the marketplace, Toshiba’s Burt pointed out that MPEG-4’s advantage was its status as an industry standard as well as being a nonproprietary streaming format.
Toshiba expects samples of its encoder to be ready by the second quarter, with mass production slated for the third quarter. The chip will be packaged in a 141-pin Chip Scale Package.
Texas Instruments said its solution is expected to be available during the second quarter.
