Panasonic has announced that is has developed a single chip Blu-ray chip which combines both reading the disc and decoding the content. Previously these functions were performed by seperate chips and required seven extra memorychips on the mainboard of the Blu-ray player. By combining the functionality into one chip, 50% less space is required and 25% energy is saved.
Thanks to the one chip solution, manufacturers are able to make smaller Blu-ray players that consume less energy at possibily lower costs. This also means that this development can result in cheaper Blu-ray playback devices.
The chips supports Blu-ray 2.0 standard, MPEG-4 H.264 and VC-1 codecs and high quality audio, including losless coded content. The chip is also able to playback video on two screens and can display 3D graphics. Of course it also supports CD and DVD playback.
Panasonic expects to start shipping the chips to manufacturers in June 2008.
Funny how we were all waiting for the format war to end. Now I think most of us wish HD DVD would come back. Then at least there would be some friggin' competition to keep prices down. What's next? Blu-ray players with Profile 2.0 now cost you your first born child? This makes me sick and I won't spend a penny on it. I'm content to watch SD quality porn. I didn't want to see ass pimples in HD anyway.
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