New Chip promises smaller, faster, cheaper BD players.

[Excalibur-king]

NEC has announced that it has successfully fitted "analog-to-digital conversion, HDMI output, and sound encoding/decoding", all the major functions of Blu-ray, onto a new single chip dubbed the EMMA 3PF. The chip should being shipping in September and will help to reduce production costs of Blu-ray players and drives. NEC says the chip will "significantly" reduce the amount of physical space required for players so consumers hopefully will soon enjoy thinner, cheaper players. Notably, the new chip will also include a multicore CPU that should greatly improve start up time for Blu-ray players, an issue that has bugged many buyers since Blu-ray players began hitting the market. The new chip supports Profile 2.0 and NEC says "monthly production is expected to be 1,000,000 units from the fourth quarter of 2008."

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News...x?NewsId=23820

[xtop]

sounds like good news to me!

[tron3]

Great news. Portable blu-ray players can't be far behind.

[MacHaggis]

Great news, especially for laptop users (like me)...

- Bogdan

[Blu Titan]

Glad to see this. Faster load time are a welcome upgrade.

[BluRay2344]

sounds awesome to me

[Amel]

so we can expect blu players with this chip to be available by the start of next year?

[jkwest]

Originally Posted by tron3

Great news. Portable blu-ray players can't be far behind.

that will be wonderful!!

[Excalibur-king]

Originally Posted by jkwest

that will be wonderful!!

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=13038

[Drewza89]

Anybody know if these chips will be in players before the end of the year? I want to get a second player for Christmas, but I'll wait if they get better, smaller, and cheaper afterwards.

[wem003]

Thrilled with my ps3's, but this would be great news!

More the merrier - esp. if its cheaper.

[JadedRaverLA]

I don't know much about NEC's new chip beyond what CDRinfo just reported, but that's pretty much the direction ALL the SOC manufacturers are heading right now. Maybe NECs dual-core design is somewhat unique... I don't really know. But overall, they aren't really going against the trend everyone else in the industry is falling.

Still good to see more and more news of these new SOCs preparing to come to market.

[welwynnick]

Originally Posted by MacHaggis

Great news, especially for laptop users (like me)...

- Bogdan

I don't think it will have any impact on laptop users. PCs use software decoding and processing on the CPU & GPU. This new chip is an integrated hardware decoder and processor, the sort that will be used stand alone players. Portables maybe, but certainly not PCs of any sort.

regards, Nick

[tron3]

Originally Posted by Amel

so we can expect blu players with this chip to be available by the start of next year?

That would be a stretch as the chips won't be mass produced until sometime in the last quarter of '08. 2nd or 3rd quarter of next year we can probably expect players with the new chip set. Unless, someone was designing a product with this chipset in mind and is simply waiting for it.

First generation chips tend to have flaws. No biggie as the firmware most likely will work around it. It is always safe to wait a few months until they tweak the design. Real errors don't crop up until it gets in the hands of the consumer.

I would love a smaller and better BD player but I'm not hocking a body part every year just to pay for it. I estimated 2010 before I get a new player and I pretty much will stick with that plan.

[TheForce8686]

Originally Posted by welwynnick

I don't think it will have any impact on laptop users. PCs use software decoding and processing on the CPU & GPU. This new chip is an integrated hardware decoder and processor, the sort that will be used stand alone players. Portables maybe, but certainly not PCs of any sort.

regards, Nick

My lap top already plays Blu Rays and is about the same size as my old one(well slightly bigger because it has a bigger monitor)