I discovered the awesomeness that are Finwe and vrAse which quite simply made me understand the whole VR segment for the first time. The idea that we will simply use our Smartphones and Tablets to power really advanced mass market heads-up augmented reality applications, this is awesome. There isn’t need for Facebook’s $2 Billion Oculus VR.
So you have been seeing all the news about Finwe and vrAse right here on ARMdevices.net consider that websites TheVerge, CNET and co don’t even know yet that this awesomeness exists.
Snapwatch shows their latest prototype/mockup flexible Snapwatch SmartWatch, will have bi-stable E Ink or other type of display, Bluetooth, thermal, solar, sensors and more.
ARM overtakes MIPS in the Set-top-box market as most of the Set-top-box SoC makers are showing ARM solutions, it’s about the ecosystem, about the platform, Android, Google TV, RDK, Wyplay, all of these user interfaces are being optimized for ARM, bringing cheaper and better more advanced and more powerful devices all at the same time. The TV market is bigger than the Web, as people still spend a lot more time watching TV than browsing the web in average. And the new features enabled by ARM, Android and other platforms, enable a lot more video-on-demand and other forms of interactivity on the TV.
Entropic shows their latest EN7310 ARM Cortex-A9 SoC with IP-STB and HDMI Stick features, integrated multi-tuner dual DVB-S/S2 cable reception, advanced security and DRM, HEVC decode and transcoding with Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) 2.0 home networking.
Entropic is a fabless semiconductor company recognized for inventing the MoCA (Multimedia over Coax Alliance) home networking technology, creating Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) Outdoor Unit (ODU) single-wire technology, and developing the industry’s first ARM processor and OpenGL graphics Set-top box (STB), System-on-a-Chip (SoC).
This video also features Eagle Kingdom Technologies (EKT) who launches DCP5205 world`s first Entropic powered hybrid PowerPlug Set-top-box combining the functionality of a Set-top-box into a plug socket, thus eliminating the need for a separate power adapter commonly required in today’s hybrid STBs.
Sigma Designs, a leading provider of System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions for home entertainment, control, connectivity and converging multimedia delivery, launches its new High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)-capable SMP8750 family ARM Processors for Set-top-boxes. Combining the HEVC compression standard with a high performance ARM Cortex A9, ARM Mali-400 GPU, the SMP8756 enables Sigma Designs to offer more performance, a better user experience and full video quality for the Set-top-box market.
Sigma SMP8756 features HEVC’s Main-10 profile allowing processing of up to 10 bit color samples accepted as the standard for 4Kx2K, OTT (over the top) and IPTV content. The SMP8750 family will support FHD and 4K resolutions. The new SMP8750 family offers SoCs at multiple cost and performance combinations allowing each SoC to offer optimal performance to price ratio for multiple STB platforms from zappers, PVR capable, Hybrid-broadcast and IPTV STBs.
The SMP8750 family migrates robust STB SoC components like broadcast TS processing, OTP and security infrastructure paired with an ARM A9 CPU and Mali GPU. The single-core ARM A9 CPU and 3000 DMIPS of application processing along with a Mali GPU combine to provide a dramatic performance profile for new 3D user interfaces, over-the-top and casual gaming applications. Incorporating Sigma’s industry-proven technologies such as secure media processing, multi-format Full-HD video decoding, VXP display processing, and field-proven AV software core, the SMP8756 is able to provide premium quality video experience. A software SDK is available for either Linux or Android platform development. Future certification of CAS technologies like Verimatrix and Nagravision are planned.
The chipset also demonstrates ecosystem compatibility, leveraging the widely supported ARM processing core, OpenGL ES, HTML-5 and others to ensure that a broad range of existing applications will run including a wide range of hardware and software extensions to support the system solutions; including global tuner/demodulator standards, wired and wireless network controllers, DTV middleware stacks and IPTV middleware ports, such as Wyplay and OpenTV.
The SMP8756 comes with a full Software Suite, including libraries and services packaged under both Linux and Android development kits for rapid development. It incorporates managed power consumption, developed for both US and European regulatory compliance and is developed to a minimal R-BOM to allow smaller footprint and lower cost implementations.
ST’s latest ARM Powered System-on-Chips supporting Android, Google TV (now Android TV), rdk, ST presents their STiH312 client-box and STiH412 server-box product families, codenamed ‘Cannes’ and ‘Monaco,’ respectively, they integrate Faroudja technology to decode and display video up to Ultra HD 4K (2160p) and the next-generation H.265 / HEVC video compression. Even supporting video transcoding (for local and remote streaming from the Set-top-box to Tablets, Smartphones, etc) STMicroelectronics presents their Dual core ARM Cortex-A9 (on 28nm process) with quad-core Mali-400 GPU does Quad-HD Ultra HD 4K HEVC video decoding, combined with Faroudja video processing technology (decoding on Cannes, decoding and transcoding on Monaco), advanced security supporting concurrent conditional access and DRM, wide connectivity, including USB 3.0, PCI-e, SATA and Gigabit Ethernet, Dedicated interfaces to a range of companion front-end solutions, including MoCA 2.0, DOCSIS 3.0, satellite and 802.11ac WiFi and more.
Tour at the Zopo headquarters in Shenzhen China, where the Zopo R&D team are putting final touches to the design of the upcoming Zopo ZP1000 ultra-thin and impressive 7.2mm Octa Core MediaTek MT6592 phone.
Shenzhen ZOPO Communications-equipment Co Ltd was founded in 2012 engaging in R&D, production, marketing and service of MediaTek based smartphones. I filmed my first video with Zopo Mobile at its founding when they launched the Zopo ZP100 (2). ZOPO ZP200 was “China’s first Glasses-Free 3D dual sim smartphone”. ZOPO was the first company to manufacture and deliver a Linux Sailfish OS smartphone to the Indian market. Zopo sells a lot of phones to China, Germany, Benelux, Netherlands and a lot of other European countries.
This is the way to do VR. Using your latest Smartphone and the $100€ vrAse headset (€ prices always include 20% VAT!). Using your latest always-improving Smartphone display, sensors, processor, graphics, storage, connectivity and everything. Just insert your Smartphone into the $100 http://vrAse.com headset (successfully funded on Kickstarter, to be available this summer) and you transform your latest smartphone into an awesome virtual reality machine. I’ve tried it, and it’s awesome. Oculus VR and other similar dedicated VR headsets probably use standard smartphone components anyway, so why not just use the latest Smartphone in the vrAse headset? vrAse just focuses on providing good optics with two lenses, which can provide for 3D and 2D immersive virtual reality.
The vrAse finally justifies having 1080p and higher than 1080p resolution on your latest smartphone because it brings your smartphone display pixels up close to your eyes!
I think the killer app for vrAse (and for any other VR headsets) may actually be 360 degree panoramic immersive video (although the 360 video cameras are not yet available to the masses, but they may be imminent), as I filmed the 6K panoramic video demo on Nexus 5 in my Finwe.fi video of last month:
http://antelife.com is a Shenzhen based online store selling some of the best Chinese cheap smartphones offering shipping throughout the world, mostly shipping to Europe at the moment. Some of these brands make the highest quality Chinese phones based on MediaTek, Qualcomm, Samsung, Broadcomm, Spreadtrum, Marvell, Nvidia and whichever other ARM Processors get to be available through the low to mid-range Chinese Smartphone market. At Antelife you can find some awesome phones whichever your budget at sub-$100, sub-$150, sub-$200, sub-$250, sub-$300 and at sub-$350. They sell a bunch of the awesome and interesting Chinese smartphone brands including XIAOMI, Innos, ZOPO, THL, JIAYU, UMI, Inew, Pulid, VINUS, Feiteng, Mpai, Haipai, Lenovo, AMOI, ZTE, HUAWEI, Newman, Iocean, CUBOT, DOOGEE, Pomp, Xiaocai, Mlais, OPPO, Mysaga, JIAKE, HTM, Utime, Coolpad, VOTO, UBTEL, Ulefone and more.
P2i shows their latest demonstrations of water repellant and waterproof nano coating technology, protecting electronics, PCBs from water. P2i’s process can be tuned to specific electronics, added to the manufacturing process, P2i claims their technology can work with any consumer electronics devices, phones, tablet and whatever. The device makers can just contact P2i to purchase their technology and to start making all phones, tablets and wearables waterproof. You can also watch my previous P2i videos here and here.
LG G2 Mini is affordable 540 x 960 pixels, 4.7 inches, KitKat, available in single SIM, dual-SIM, 3G, and 4G LTE variants, along with four colour options – Titan Black, Lunar White, Red, and Gold. The processors used are MSM8926 for LTE, and MSM8226 for 3G and the Latin American LTE variant (LATAM LTE) features a 1.7GHz Nvidia Tegra 4i.
Open Source Programmable Solar BMS development board for any type of rechargeable Lithium cells and supercapacitors. This is for educational purposes only not meant to be used as a finished product it will also come with video tutorials so you can learn how to program a microcontroller (ARM cortex M0) and HW design including PCB layout using Kicad. You can see more details on this video of the beta sample and there will be soon an announcement for the Kickstarter campaign with a video announcement on the electrodacus youtube channel
Rovi’s DivX presents a free encoding and decoding solution using High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265), the successor to H.264, the video compression standard that promises to deliver visual quality equivalent to H.264/AVC with up to 50% bitrate savings.
Jon Masters (2, 3) is responsible for leading research and development efforts around the ARM Architecture at Red Hat (in particular, the 64-bit ARM Architecture known as AArch64), instrumental in the creation of the Linaro Enterprise Group, sitting on the LEG Technical Steering Committee, and is elected to represent LEG on the core Linaro Technical Steering Committee.
