Nice article on chipsets

siddh

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Was browsing the web when i found the following article on chipsets. Thought of sharing it.

Media Player Chipsets
This page gives some technical background to the history of Media Player chipsets.

Media Players all use a SoC (system on a chip) design whereby all hardware functions are contained within the chipset (video, sound, LAN, interface. etc). For this reason it is sensible to group players of similar chipset together as they will have the same raw performance. The differences come in firmware (software running on the chipset) although in practice firmware is often also very similar between players of the same chipset family.


The first chipset to be capable of decoding 1080p full-HD video was the 863x from a company called Sigma Designs. The Sigma 863x spawned a whole series of Media Players from early 2008 onwards. It was these players that kick-started the Media Player revolution. The Sigma 863x is clocked at 300Mhz. The Sigma 863x has now been superseded by newer chipsets, aimed squarely at the growing Media Player market. Limitations of the Sigma 8635 such as slow user interface, limited DTS support, and just general lack of power have been addressed in a new generation of chips released from 2009 onwards.

The Realtek 1283 / 1073 chipset range appeared in mid 2009 and is clocked between the old Sigma 863x and the newer Sigma 864x/865x. The Realteks use one CPU, clocked at 400mhz. A flood of cheap Realtek based Media Players arrived through 2009. The 1073 is the same as the 1283 with some DTV functions stripped out, they are otherwise exactly the same chip providing the same performance in a Media Player. The only hardware performance difference amongst the Realteks is that the Xtreamer is clocked at 450mhz rather than 400mhz.


There are Realtek 1073DA and 1073DD variations, with the DA version being an early release that is unable to downmix DTS. The DA variation is common among the cheaper players. We differentiate between the versions in our detailed specifications and comparison table.

The Realtek chipsets provide fast and reliable performance at a low cost. These players can cope with all Media files you are likely to come across with only abnormally high reframe files or some HD audio formats providing any problems. It was revealed in February 2010 that neither the 1073DA, 1073DD, or the 1283 can passthrough (bitstream) Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA.

In early 2010 Realtek started shipping enhanced + versions of it's chips. The 1073DD+ and 1283+ can both passthrough DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD. The number of players using these chipsets is currently limited but we expect it to grow. The ACRyan Playon!HD DVR uses what is marketted as a '1283C+' processor. We can see no difference between this and the DD+, so this may be purely a marketing name.


The Realtek RTD 1055 / 1085 / 1185 chips are the successors to the 1073 / 1283 series and will launch in late 2010. They all run at 500Mhz (compared to 400Mhz for the 1073). The 1055 is a no network version with limited Flash RAM. The 1085 has 512MB RAM and 512MB DDR RAM (so twice the DDR of the 1073), it also has has an integrated Flash enabled browser. The 1185 is an updated 1283 and has all the features of the 1085 whilst also being DVB-T / PVR capable.

Sigma released both Sigma 864x series and Sigma 865x series chipsets in late 2009, with the first player featuring the 8643 (Popcorn Hour C-200) shipping in September 2009, and the first 8655 players (WDTV Live / Eminent EM7075) arriving in October 2009. The Sigma 864x and the 865x are related and similar chips with the 864x being the more powerful.


The Sigma 864x contains a 667mhz CPU, a 333mhz IPU (image processing unit), 2* HD video decoding, and three 333mhz Audio DSPs. The 8643 and 8642 are identical except that the 8642 is a Macrovision version allowing for the ability to play copy protected DVD / Blu-Ray.

The Sigma 8646 and 8647 are versions of the 864x expected in late 2010 / early 2011 with improved performance (800Mhz) and working Gigabit LAN.


The Sigma 865x uses a 500mhz CPU, a 333mhz IPU, 1.25x HD video decoding, and one 333mhz Audio DSP. All the 865x variations are similar, with the 8655 being marginally the most powerful. The 8655 uses 64bit RAM whereas the 8653 uses 32bit and the 8655 has six video DACs whereas the 8653 has four. The only benchmarks we could find give identical scores so real world performance is likely near identical. The 8654 and 8652 are copy protection (Macrovision) enabled versions of each allowing for the ability to play copy protected DVD / Blu-Ray. One notable deficiency in all the Sigma chips is the inability to play RMVB files. The Sigma 8656 is an upgraded chip coming in late 2010 and offering hardware 3D acceleration.

The AmLogic 8626H (Apollo) chipset was launched in early 2010 as a budget alternative to the Realtek 1073. It runs at 400mhz and appears to be at least equal in decoding performance to the Realtek chips whilst being even cheaper. The 8626H's main drawbacks are that it does not support lossless HD-Audio or WMV / VC-1. The Amlogic 8613 is an older Amlogic chipset used in the WDTV Mini and is unable to decode 1080P.


The ARM 11 series, as previously found in car entertainment systems, is clocked at 500Mhz and offers performance roughly on a par with Sigma 865x chips.

New for 2010, the Boxchip F10 is SoChip SC9800 based (currently also used in some high-end portable media players) and offers full 7.1 downmix. Clock speed is as yet unknown but decoding performance has been shown to be comparable with 1073 based players.

Intel has long promised to release it's own range ('CE') of Media Player chipsets. The first player announced with such a chipset was meant to be the CE3100 powered Conceptronic Yuixx in mid 2009, although almost a year later there is no sign of the Yuixx. What we do have however is the promise of both Google TV and BoxeeBox using the Intel CE4100. This chip runs at 1.2Ghz and reports state it is capable of 90Mbit/s h.264 video, making it roughly on a par (for h.264) with the 667Mhz Sigma 864x series. As a general purpose chip it will however be much superior.

Other chipsets that we've come across but have little information on are MStar D7M26L/6M68/SC9800/TCC8900 and Amlogic7226/7228/8618.


Differences of Chipset:

1. F10 Chipset
Advantage: support all kind of formats, cost cheaper
Disadvantage: theoretically unable cope file size more than 15GB, average output quality
Recommend: Basic Multimedia Playback

2. AMLogic Chipset
Advantage: support all kind of formats (except full HD VC-1), cost cheaper, low power consumption, good output quality
Disadvantage: theoretically unable cope file size more than 20GB, cant support VC-1
Recommend: Satisfiable Multimedia Playback

3. Realtek Chipset
Advantage: support all kind of formats, able to cope file size more than 20GB, good output quality
Disadvantage: output sound quality lower than Sigma Chipset, device will slightly hot than F10 and AMLogic Chipsets
Recommend: Excellent Multimedia Playback

4. Sigma Chipset
Advantage: support all kind of formats (except Real Media), able to cope file size more than 20GB, excellent output quality
Disadvantage: cost higher, can't support Real Media
Recommend: Extreme Multimedia Playback for Multimedia Enthusiast
 
I have an Amlogic 8626H based player (Micca MPlay HD) , and even though it's not bleeding edge, (No network, wifi) the output looks nice on my 50" Plasma. Very good value for a $50 player.
 
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