Category: Favorite companies

Google Wallet should use ARM TrustZone for 100% security

Posted by Charbax – February 13, 2012
Category: Opinions, ARM, Android

Google Wallet should rely on ARM TrustZone to make the pin code authentication system 100% secure. I filmed about ARM TrustZone a couple years ago. (I suggested this last May when Google Wallet was launched). The way ARM TrustZone works is to create a separate 100% trusted OS used just to enter the pin code on a hardware level separation, thus a little secure-mode light diode can light up when in it, the main purpose is to prevent software snoopers/fake logon screens etc. I expect something like this is enabled by the NXP PN65 security chip that Google has suggested using on the initial couple NFC-enabled phones on the market, but actually using ARM TrustZone is the best idea. I expect to see new ARM TrustZone enabled phones at Mobile World Congress in a couple weeks from now. Here’s a latest news item about ARM TrustZone for Mobile Wallets: ARM to add NFC mobile wallet support (NFCworld.com)

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Google Entertainment System (GES)

Posted by Charbax – February 10, 2012
Category: Set-top-boxes, Opinions, Google, Android, Google TV

Can be as cheap as $49 or $99, run a full ARM Powered Google TV with advanced 3D video-gaming. For example using Mali-T604 graphics, the graphics are comparable to an xbox360. It basically plays all Android games on the TV. Use a Bluetooth or RF Keyboard/mouse and you’ve got a full Chrome Desktop on your HDTV. It also includes the Android@Home RF protocol for connecting all your home appliances to the web. USB host for hard drives, becomes a WiFi hotspot, may also dock a White Spaces modem/router later so you share your unused home bandwidth to your whole neighborhood. Google can brand as much hardware they want, and I think they should, they just also make that hardware and software open source and let any other hardware makers sell it also.

You can discuss this and share it on Google+: https://plus.google.com/106075758531242552855/posts/YSLEdSYj5aj

Source: my logic/speculation and the Wall Street Journal

Archos 101 G9 Turbo 1.5Ghz for $279 at Woot.com today

Posted by Charbax – February 9, 2012
Category: Tablets, Texas Instruments, Archos, Android

It’s basically as powerful (or more powerful) than a Tegra3 tablet, but at nearly half the price. The normal MSRP price (for the 16GB 1.5Ghz version) is $399 so this is a good deal! It’ll support Ice Cream Sandwich through an official firmware update probably coming later this month. Support for US-compatible 3G/4G/LTE USB sticks is possibly also soon to be announced (depends just on US carriers or MVNO’s allowing Archos to use their networks I think).

Check it out at http://www.woot.com/

Found via: androidpolice.com

Chrome for Android now released

Posted by Charbax – February 7, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Smartphones, Opinions, Google, Android

This confirms my expectation for Ice Cream Sandwich, that Chrome OS and Google TV are being merged with Android. I’ve been talking about it since my October 5th ICS predictions and way before in May 2011, January 2011 and February 2010.

A full Chrome Browser in Android can be the key to see the huge market for ARM Powered Laptops explode.

Look forward to having a full ChromeOS-like Laptop experience on your ARM Powered Android Tablet as soon as you plug a Keyboard dock to it. Look forward to having a full Chromebox-like experience when you connect the HDMI output of your Smartphone to a PC monitor or HDTV and use a Bluetooth or USB Host Keyboard and mouse.

The main question is now to test the performance of the full Chrome browser on Android, I’d like to see its performance on the Galaxy Nexus that has the high memory bandwidth OMAP4460 1.2Ghz and 1.5Ghz processor. I’d like to see its performance on OMAP4470 1.8Ghz, and Tegra3 1.3Ghz. I think the Chrome browser performance on those Android devices can now be faster than on a Netbook.

Mary Lou Jepsen presents at Google X event: Reading images from your brain’s visual memory

Posted by Charbax – February 7, 2012
Category: Displays, Google, Pixel Qi

At the new Google X event project, http://www.wesolveforx.com/, Pixel Qi CEO and founder Mary Lou Jepsen presents the idea of recording images from the human brains memory. With a bit of investment in the right technologies to record higher resolution signals from human brains, it can soon be possible to record images from human memory. As far as I understand the presentation, you can soon wear some special glasses that have small sensors on your retina, or some sensors on your head, then just think of some images and those can get recorded with high detail and precision. Seeing an image and thinking about that image is the same thing, our brains record every image that we see for ever with great detail and it is soon be possible to read from our brains visual memory.

I was on The White House Google+ Hangout yesterday

Posted by Charbax – February 3, 2012
Category: Opinions, Google

You can see my question on yesterday’s Hangout with The White House at 19 minutes and 36 seconds in followed by the answers of Steve Case, co-founder and former CEO of AOL and Aneesh Chopra, the first Chief Technology Officer of the United States. This was The White House’s second Google+ Hangout after the one 3 days before with President Barack Obama.

I think everyone in every company should have 20% time to work on their own ideas, and successful ideas can then get resources and funding required to create new startups (within or outside of the companies that can decide to fund those new ideas), create more and better jobs, give people time to create the big projects that can make the world a better place. Isn’t it time for 20% time to become bigger than just Google?

CES 2012 Highlights

Posted by Charbax – February 1, 2012
Category: Smart Glass, 4K UHD, Energy Harvesting, Top Video Lists, CES, Geniatech

I filmed 92 videos at CES 2012. Here are some of my Highlights:

1. The Motorola Kopin Golden-i Headmounted computer for wearable computing

Being able to borrow this setup for the past 2 months, among many other that I’ve been able to meet and demonstrate it to, this allowed me to meet Google co-founder Sergey Brin at CES 2012, Sebastian Thrun (Google X, Stanford Artificial Intelligence, Udacity, Inventor of the Google Self-driving Car) and Steve Lee (Manager of Google Maps for Mobile, Latitude and Google X), I was speaking with them for about 5 minutes!


Thanks Robert Scoble for taking this photo! I interviewed Robert Scoble about his CES impressions a few minutes earlier.

I am really lucky to be one of the first few people in the world to be able experiment with this headmounted computer (they have manufactured less than 250 prototypes thus far). That caught the attention of Google co-founder Sergey Brin who approached me and asked me what it was! I got them to try some of the headmounted voice command software demos in the headset, talk about my $199 Archos 70b Internet Tablet with Honeycomb (and ICS later) which Archos claims to have nearly the third largest worldwide tablet market share with their 2 million Android tablets sold in 2011 (Sergey Brin knows Archos perfectly well it seems, Archos has been making Android tablets for over 2 years but has only gotten fully Google certified since using Honeycomb on their G9 tablet generation released 3 months ago).

Sergey Brin and his colleagues asked me if I thought headmounted monocular wearable computing was going to be big, I said yes of course. I consider it can be like the dashboard for ones life. Positionned a bit below the eye, it can provide augmented informations about your surroundings, display your emails, social media updates, search news alerts, chat messages and more, without the need to pull out your phone or tablet from your pocket. Of course for the mass market consumer audience, it needs to be nearly as compact as a bluetooth headset with a retractable micro-display and a priced below $500 to become an accessory interfacing by bluetooth to any Android phone or tablet. I expect this to start becoming huge later this year or soon after. Kopin is working with Motorola Solutions to mass manufacture an industrial version and they want to work on consumer oriented uses. I also expect wearable computing to become huge in the form of intelligent Android wrist watches such as the DVIP Phaeton and the I’m Watch (Casio GB 6900 G-Shock, Sony-Ericsson Liveview and Motorola Moto ACTV also qualify as early attempts)

I wish I had thought to suggest to Sergey Brin and his team when they asked me what was my CES highlight, that I could guide them 20 meters around the corner of the Samsung booth to the Texas Instruments booth that was showing the OMAP5 development kit and the $30 BOM OMAP4 Always Innovating HDMI Stick (similar to the more expensively priced FXI Tech Exynos 4 stick), instead I could only think of telling them that I liked the $75 Eken AllWinner 7″ ICS tablet in the Hilton China hall which was so far away from Central Hall they probably didn’t spend the time to go there.

2. E Ink provided me with a new demonstration of their latest technology in my E Ink On Every Smart Surface video. Featuring the 300DPI 11.5″ E Ink screen, new high-speed stylus on E Ink demos (with the right collaborative text editing and collaborative stylus annotations software, this could be huge!), on devices like the Eton Rukus, E Ink for digital signage. All your local supermarkets may soon be using E Ink for showing prices in stores.

3. All Camcorder companies seem to wake up to the idea of including low power high performance WiFi streaming and upload into consumer camcorders. See my videos of the Sony Bloggie Live, Toshiba Camileo Air10, Canon HF M52. This is awesome! WiFi in camcorders has been on my wishlist of camcorder features since my post of August 2nd 2008 and my updated camcorder wish-list post of January 31st 2010. Finally the camcorder makers are waking up and differentiating! There still are a bunch of features that I would like from these camcorders. High-quality wireless (multi-Bluetooth) and wired external microphones support. 1080p recording and at the same time live WiFi video streaming, Google+ Hangouts live streaming video upload. Automatic resumable YouTube WiFi upload in between takes. Touch screens to edit Titles, Descriptions, Tags right from the camcorder. WiFi upload must be as fast as using a Laptop. But for sure they are on the right track! I’m looking forward to Panasonic’s Sanyo HD3000 level entry into this market, hopefully with all these WiFi features and more!

4. Ice Cream Sandwich on every device! On Rockchip (2, 3), Telechips (2) , AmLogic (2, 3, 4 ) (ICS on AmLogic Set-top-box by Geniatech), Boxchip AllWinner A10 (Cortex-A8), ST Ericsson U8500 (2)

5. Pixel Qi shows latest status. 10.1″ 1280×800 and 7″ 800×480 in mass production, a lot of design wins, big brand products to be announced soon.

6. OLPC XO-3 shown for the first time!, OLPC does it again, this time revolutionizing the use of tablets for education, pricing it below $100 for mass orders, building it sturdy, unbreakable, sunlight readable with a 8″ Pixel Qi, with a solar charger in the screen cover.

7. ARM Powered Google TV has finally been launched! Featuring solutions shown using the Marvell Armada 1500 platform, Mediatek has an ARM Processor for it, LG showed their new ARM Powered Google TV L9 Processor and platform. Sony shows their second generation Google TV, now ARM Powered for cheaper/better and more revolutionary and awesome! I expect we’ll hear about Samsung, Panasonic, Philips, Sharp, Toshiba all will announce ARM Powered Google TV within months from now. By the half of 2012, most new HDTVs will come with ARM Powered Google TV built-in by default! I also expect as soon as the ARM Powered Google TV software is open sourced that we’ll see it run on cheaper ARM Processors that don’t do 1080p60fps, overlays, IR blaster and HDMI input.

8. 4K HDTVs are comming! Yeah! 4K 55″ HDTVs are always the most awesome demonstrations at trade shows and have been for the past 3-4 years! The arguments by supposed home theater experts that 4K is not usable in living rooms are not true! 4K is fantastic, fenomenal technology to have in the home! Just put your 8 megapixel pictures on an SD card, see those pictures on that 4K 55″ HDTV, and be ready to faint, standing up close to the screen the quality is spectacular. Consumers and even professional photographers never get to see the full detail and resolution of their high megapixel photography. Unless you zoom in on pictures, you never get to see more than 2 megapixel of your pictures quality! With a 4K screen in your living room and that you can use as office desktop monitor, the 4K screens are going to be revolutionary. At CES 2012, Sharp claims their 4K-ICC 55″ TV is to be mass manufactured and launched at consumer oriented pricing later this year! Samsung showed a totally awesome 70″ 4K TV. I have a feeling that Sharp, Toshiba, Samsung and others are just about to launch 4K at hopefully way below $10 thousand, hopefully below $2000 soon! If it’s going to be $1999, I recommend everyone save money to get one. As source, all Hollywood movies are already digitized to 4K and that can fit on a regular Blu-ray disc, streamed from YouTube 4K or over 50 4K movies can fit on a 2TB hard drive.

9. Panasonic launches consumer priced HC X900M camcorder with 4K video sensor! But still a 1080p engine for now. The 4K consumer priced camcorders must be very close! My JVC GC-PX10 also has a 4K video sensor! But mine with its Falconbrid 4K processor also is for now only setup to record it to a 1080p (up to 36mbitps) file.

10. Acer shows 10.1″ Iconia Tab A700 1920×1200 Tablet. Purely amazing super high resolution tablet displays and Ice Cream Sandwich works amazingly smoothly on it! Retina Tablet resolution has been achieved! Toshiba seems to want to do lots of weirdly sized HD tablets also.

11. Lenovo shows Tablet Dock MSM8960 Qualcomm Krait Tablet convertible. Qualcomm shows MSM8960 for gaming.

12. iRiver Kibot, the small new robots are cool, basic stuff for now. Within 10-15 years we’ll be having ARM Powered Robots take care of everything in our homes, washing dishes, take out the trash, cook the food, everything else!

13. 55″ OLED screens shown by Samsung and LG. Those are cool for sure! But I expect they are way more expensive to manufacture than 4K LCD screens of the same size today.

14. Freescale launches 2 new skews of their ARM Cortex-A9 i.MX6 processor platform (for E-readers and certain In-Car infotainment segments).

15. New Samsung Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Note clones are invading China! Kente shows some examples. Consider that excellent 4.3″ capacitive WVGA 3G-ready Android phones are being sold below $100 in China by now. Check back here on ARMdevices.net during the next few months for a lot of news and coverage on these. Also a cheap new Android phone design by ZTE.

16. Virtualization on Android for Enterprise by VMware, smooth remote desktopping PCoIP protocol on OMAP4 shown by Teradici.

16. LG Spectrum, nice 4.5″ 1280×800 IPS-LCD LTE Android phone! LG for sure plans to play an always bigger role in the high-end smartphones market.

17. The Huawei Ascend P1 and P1 S are awesome looking OMAP4460 1.5Ghz 4.3″ Super AMOLED Plus 6.65mm thinnest Smartphone in the world. I think Huawei plans to be a huge player in the worldwide smartphones market. Look for this and much more awesome Huawei Android Smartphones coming out. Their main advantage may be their aggresively competitive pricing. If this phone is sold for $299 unlocked, who wouldn’t buy it?

18. I did my first live Google+ Hangouts On Air from CES, but because of the interference I couldn’t reliably do it at the CES show floor with my headmounted augmented video-blogging system. But I did it every morning on my way between my hotels and the CES showfloor in my series of CES 2012 Monorail Hangouts: 1, 2, 3. I hope to soon do much more impressive things with the Google+ Hangouts On Air features! Expect quality live and on-demand Hangout entertainment from my website at the level of the Hangouts with Barack Obama and Desmond Tutu!

ARM quarterly profits up 45% year/year

Posted by Charbax – January 31, 2012
Category: ARM

ARM just published their Q4 2011 numbers:

Q4 2011 – Financial Summary
Q4 2011 Q4 2010 % Change
Revenue ($m) 217.0 179.6 21%
Revenue (£m) 137.8 113.9 21%
Operating margin 48.2% 41.1%
Profit before tax (£m) 69.0 47.6 45%
Earnings per share (pence) 3.71 2.90 28%

Warren East, Chief Executive Officer, said:

“In Q4 and throughout 2011 ARM has seen strong licensing growth, driven by market-leading semiconductor companies increasing their commitment to ARM technology, and more new customers choosing ARM technology for the first time. We have also seen our royalty revenue continue to grow faster than industry revenues as the ARM Partnership gains share in our target markets.

2012 will bring exciting opportunities and challenges as ARM enters competitive new markets where we are well positioned to succeed with leading technology, an innovative business model and a thriving ecosystem of Partners. As our customers are designing more ARM technology into their widening product portfolios, ARM is investing in the development of new products. These products will drive further long-term growth in our revenues, profits and cash.”

Since I started this blog on January 1st 2010 (I was before video-blogging at TechVideoBlog.com since 2004), the ARM stock has gone up 343%.

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Orchard Inc Toughlet, Pixel Qi tablet for commercial ruggedized outdoor use

Posted by Charbax – January 24, 2012
Category: Tablets, Exclusive videos, Texas Instruments, CES, Pixel Qi, Android

Orchard Inc raised $4 Million for a tablet startup, here showing their titanium aluminium enclosure design, water resistant, unbreakable, with Pixel Qi and OMAP4 Powered Android, designed for outdoor use.

Arnova 7c G2 sold for 80£ in the UK, 7″ capacitive unlocked 3G HSPA+ inside

Posted by Charbax – January 23, 2012
Category: Tablets, Qualcomm, Archos, Android

The new Archos Arnova 7c G2 has been released. It’s being sold for 80£ at Carphonewarehouse.com with an unlocked, no-contract 3G SIM card slot. It’s a 7″ 800×480 capacitive screen, the Qualcomm MSM7227 800Mhz ARM11 processor that can run Gingerbread now, ICS possibly soon, with the Adreno 200 graphics that supports most Android 3D games today.

This price is basically $99 without the 20% UK VAT tax. By far the cheapest 7″ capacitive 3G-enabled tablet.

Some other specs:
– 4GB internal storage, expandable with microSDHC cards
– Dimensions: 195 mm x 118 mm x 14.1 mm
– Weight: 490 g
– WiFi, Bluetooth, micro USB 2.0 slave port, microSD slot, front facing camera, G-sensor, microphone, built-in speaker, GPS

Pixel Qi at CES 2012

Posted by Charbax – January 17, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Displays, Exclusive videos, CES, Pixel Qi, Android, Windows

The 1280×800 10.1″ Pixel Qi screen is ready, here it is demonstrated under a bright spotlight simulating the sun as well as in some prototypes of upcoming Android tablets. Founder, CEO and inventor Mary Lou Jepsen talks about the latest news from Pixel Qi, where they are going, what they are up to.

Blue Times shows $50 HiSilicon 3716 and AmLogic 8726 ARM Cortex-A9 Android Set-top-box

Posted by Charbax – January 16, 2012
Category: Set-top-boxes, Exclusive videos, AmLogic, HiSilicon, CES, BlueTimes, Android

Blue Times uses the Huawei HiSilicon single-core 1Ghz ARM Cortex-A9 as well as the single-core AmLogic ARM Corte-A9 for their Android Set-top-box.

E Ink On Every Smart Surface

Posted by Charbax – January 15, 2012
Category: E-readers, Displays, Energy Harvesting, Exclusive videos, CES, E Ink

Exclusive 17-minute interview with E Ink’s CMO at CES, where they showed me a Triton color display for signage with color so saturated that it looked like an LCD except that it was thinner than OLED, sunlight readable, uses no backlights and uses very little power. I also saw the SURF display used in a hand drill which has not been filmed before. The 11.5″ 300DPI eDocument reader made in collaboration with Epson. The Triton color display based Ectaco eReader that had just won the CES innovation award, it is being deployed in Russian schools. New E Ink watches from Phosphor and Seiko. Finally, the Eton Ruckus music player with E Ink display that was launched this week was demonstrated, it is considered to be indestructible.

E Ink has shipped over 25 million E Ink screens for e-readers alone in 2011, that’s up from 10 million screens in 2010 and 4 million screens in 2009. Now E Ink is also working to expand into new markets, signage, appliances, everywhere. The idea is that more and more devices and surfaces may get an E Ink screen on them that thus by being bi-stable can show the informations for a long time without using any battery. While many electronic paper technology companies show samples, E Ink is actually in mass production with monochrome, color and segmented displays and they claim that no technology in the world comes close to the reading experience on E Ink’s displays and these displays are easy on the eyes since they don’t have a shiny background or light emitting backlight.

E Ink also provided me with following amazing video featuring the actual E Ink Pearl roll display material used in Nook, Sony, Kindle etc. The video was shot alongside the Charles river in Cambridge/Boston and you can see MIT (E Ink is MIT spin off) and Boston skyline in the background. The display is a few feet wide and can go one kilometer (it was 500 meters in this video):

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YouTube keynote at CES 2012

Posted by Charbax – January 15, 2012
Category: Web, Exclusive videos, CES, Google

YouTube had a huge keynote by YouTube Content Partnerships manager Robert Kyncl at CES 2012, you can see it in its entirety here. The talk is about the amazing growth of YouTube, web video is about to represent 90% of all Internet bandwidth. YouTube works to monetize more and more of the web video content. I’d like them to overlay affiliated one-click purchases and price comparisons of the products video-blogged. I believe web video is a huge deal, just as it’ll consume 90% of the web’s bandwidth, it will also generate upwards 90% of the web’s and Google’s revenue, profit, learning, information, attention and time spent.

In the following clip, Stan Lee, the creator of the CSI TV show franchise, talks about user generated content on YouTube.

Motorola Kopin Golden-i at the Verizon booth at CES 2012

Posted by Charbax – January 14, 2012
Category: Displays, Cameras, Wearables, Smart Glass, Other, Exclusive videos, Texas Instruments, CES, Kopin, Windows

The Motorola Kopin Golden-i is being showcased at the Verizon booth at CES 2012, demonstrating hands-free wearable computing user interfaces for Industrial uses such as Construction, Medical, Public safety, Utilities and more. I’ve been using this for the past 2 months to attempt to have a wearable computing augmented video-blogging system, using Google+ Hangouts On Air with the headmounted display showing a live chat and live status updates from Google+, Twitter, Email alerts and more.

Geniatech shows Ice Cream Sandwich on Set-top-box using AmLogic ARM Cortex-A9

Posted by Charbax – January 14, 2012
Category: Set-top-boxes, Exclusive videos, AmLogic, CES, Geniatech, Android, Google TV

Shenzhen Geniatech shows their latest Set-top-box powered by the single-core AmLogic ARM Cortex-A9 processor running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

OLPC XO-3 unveiled at CES 2012

Posted by Charbax – January 9, 2012
Category: Tablets, Energy Harvesting, Exclusive videos, Marvell, CES, OLPC, Android

The One Laptop Per Child foundation presents the final design for the OLPC sub-$100 Tablet with a 8″ 1024×768 capacitive LCD touch screen, a touch screen optimized version of Sugar Linux. The thin screen protector doubles as a solar charger. Once countries order millions of these, the price can definitely be below $100.

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ARM Powered Google TV launching at CES 2012!

Posted by Charbax – January 6, 2012
Category: MediaTek, Marvell, CES, Google, Google TV

I’ve been posting over 20 blog posts about the ARM Powered Google TV over the past year and a half, and now it’s finally going to be shown for the first time on several ARM Processors at CES 2012! ARM is I think the key to make Google TV seriously revolutionary and a huge worldwide success, revolutionizing TV, the media people spend 5 hours per day watching in average! Look forward to my up to 100 videos coming up next week from CES as I plan to film the top ARM Powered devices to be shown there.

The ARM Processors to be unveiled to support “The New Google TV Experience with Full Live TV Integration” are:

– Marvell 1500 (which I think I might have covered a few months ago nicknamed Project Berlin shown in a Zinwell prototype)
– Mediatek shows an ARM Processor for Google TV
– LG L9 is probably an ARM Cortex-A9 optimized for Google TV

TV makers to show new ARM Powered Google TV boxes at CES 2012 include:
– LG
– Sony
– Vizio

Might not yet be showing Google TV but probably are preparing to launch Google TV a few months later:
– Samsung
– Panasonic
– I expect Philips to replace their Set-top-box functionality with Google TV
– Sharp
– Toshiba

These ARM Powered Google TV boxes thus have the full Live TV integration mode supported. That means the ARM Processors are optimized to playback 1080p in 60fps, evt play 2 1080p video streams at the same time (picture in picture stuff), they support HDMI input and output at the same time, rendering overlay graphics on top of the 1080p video stream, controlling an IR blaster. I expect they also support all video codecs up to 1080p at full bitrates, I expect 1080p USB webcams are supported for HD video conferencing. USB host ports are supported to connect USB NTFS/EXT/FAT32 hard drives and USB sticks. Full Chrome browser web browsing on top of Android with Flash is for sure supported.

That means the ARM Processors used in Set-top-boxes such as Samsung Hummingbird, AmLogic ARM Cortex-A9 Single-core, ZiiLabs, Rockchip RK2918, VIA ARM9, probably those didn’t include the “Full Live TV Integration” support. My guess is some of those may also be working on customizing some ARM Processors to also support the Live TV HDMI pass-through features, while others I think may be waiting to support Google TV without Live TV pass-through. Possibly that those other ARM platforms need to wait for Google to open source this new Google TV source code before they can try to use the basic Google TV functionalities without Live TV pass-through. Perhaps Google will announce a Basic Google TV version to use on basic ARM Processors that aren’t providing the pass-through stuff.

For people who don’t use Cable, Satellite, DVB-T/C/S, for TV, there is no need for the HDMI input features of Google TV. We still want to have a more basic version of Google TV that offers every other feature and may provide it on cheaper hardware.

We’re talking a revolution in YouTube, a revolution in video-on-demand, a revolution in Democracy. Why and how? Simply because things are going to change and improve much faster as more and more people watch web video content directly on the TV in a leanback experience, and don’t watch the content in small embedded players on a laptop or desktop computer. Things change as more and more people will watch web video content instead of regular TV channels when in the living room. Things change when more and more people watch more political videos through the web, such as watching official campaign videos explaining policies instead of only the short sound-bytes on news channels leading up to important elections.

The most important factor that will make ARM Powered Google TV a success is the price. Marvell CEO said in his keynote at ARM TechCon 2010 that it only costs $25 to add this type of Internet connected Set-top-box functionality into a HDTV, and that it thus only makes sense that nearly all new HDTVs will quite simply integrate this right inside of them. It will be expected by consumers buying a new HDTV, that Google TV functionality will always be included for free and that it does not increase the price. I think all HDTVs will include an Ethernet port, some might include WiFi or just support it using any WiFi dongle on one of its several USB host ports on the side. As Eric Schmidt has said, by the middle of 2012, expect that most new HDTVs will include Google TV functionality for free. Expect ARM Powered Google TV set-top-boxes for $99 with Live TV integration and $49 without Live TV integration (no HDMI input, no IR blaster).

Source: googletv.blogspot.com

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Highlights of 2011 on ARMdevices.net

Posted by Charbax – December 31, 2011
Category: 4K UHD, Energy Harvesting, Top Video Lists, Geniatech

I posted 573 videos from 15 tradeshows, with 7.1 Million views on my YouTube channel (doubling my total view count to 14.7 Million), thank you for your 7159 comments, 7397 Likes, thank you for reading my blog, watching my videos, commenting, rating, sending news tips and sharing! Thanks to my 4520 followers on Google+! Since August, I post most of my tech opinions on my Google+. Here are some of my Highlights in ARM Powered devices that I blogged on ARMdevices.net in 2011:

January
Microsoft announces and shows Windows 8 on ARM
All-in-one Motorola Atrix 4G launched
Nvidia announces Project Denver (I think it may be their ARM Cortex-A15 project)
OLPC shows ARM Powered XO-1.75 Laptop
Google confirms ARM Powered Google TV
Pixel Qi shows 7″ and announces 9.7″ and 10.1″ 1280×800
Seco shows pico projector in a lamp concept
view top-20 CES 2011 videos
February
CERN accelerates to 3.5TeV to find Higgs Boson (7TeV in 2014)
Archos has 22% of the tablet market share in France
Samsung Galaxy S2 is launched
Mediatek powers $80 Android smartphones
LG launches first OMAP4430 phone
Google has a giant Booth and dominates at MWC
My interview with Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich designer Mathias Duarte
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 launched
TI talks OMAP5 ARM Cortex-A15
MHL is the new standard for HDMI output through the MicroUSB connector
I ask RIM when Playbook is to get Android apps support
ST Ericsson A9500 ARM Cortex-A9 development kit launched
Nvidia shows quad-core Tegra3
ST Ericsson ST6715 powers sub-$100 Android smartphones
Sony Ericsson Liveview is the first wearable Android wrist watch
view my top MWC videos
Arnova 8 launched
Arnova 10 launched
Asus Transformer Honeycomb laptop launched
March
Nintendo 3DS launched, first mass produced non-glasses 3D portable screen
Shenzhen Ider Sub-$60 Android Set-top-box launched
Zinwell shows $70 Android set-top-box
HTC Flyer with stylus launched
Beagleboard xM launched
TI DaVinci DM816x and DM814x can do 4K2K video playback
Hard Kernel Samsung Exynos 4210 tablet development kit launched
Trim Slice Tegra2 desktop launched
QNX talks about the Blackberry Playbook software
Seco ARM/x86 cross platform modules
Toradex shows Tegra2 on SO-DIMM form factor
My interview with ThePirateBay founder Peter Sunde
I’m interviewed on German Radio DRadio Wissen about my video-blogging
view top-15 CeBIT 2011 videos
view top-6 Embedded World videos
First Archos G9 rumors leak
April
Larry Page starts as Google CEO
Archos at the Shenzhen electronics fair
My review of the $95 Kinstone ARM Cortex-A9 Android tablet
My review of the $87 3.5″ capacitive Android Smartphone FG8, which I still use as my main smartphone today and it works great
Behind the scenes at a little Shenzhen Tablet/Laptop factory
Geniatech talks ARM Cortex-A9 Set-top-box
Karasnn talks cheap Mediatek Android Smartphones
My review of the $120 Android 3.5″ capacitive iphone4-clone H2000
Archos 7c Home Tablet, Rk2918 capacitive shown at Archos Shenzhen headquarters
Hello Kitty booth in Hong Kong
Arnova 10 G2 first demonstrated
AmLogic ARM Cortex-A9 set-top-box tested
Ramos ARM Cortex-A9 capacitive tablets booth tour
Rockchip RK2918 in a potentially sub-$50 Android Set-top-box
$125 ARM Cortex-A9 dual-core NEC/Renesas powered capacitive tablet by Livall.cn
Honeycomb keyrings at Rockchip RK2918 booth
My Android Tablet review in the Qatari Desert 2, 3
Archos dominates Hong Kong Android tablet sales
Walking around at the huge Shenzhen Smartphones market, where the worlds cheapest Android smartphones can be found
view top videos filmed at 3 Shenzhen and Hong Kong fairs in April 2011
May
The Chrome OS Team Answers some of my ARM Powered Chromebook questions at Google I/O
Solar Impulse does first solar-powered international flight from Switzerland to Belgium
Google Wallet launched
Samsung Origen Exynos 4210 development kit launched
Pixel Qi shows 10.1″ 1280×800 screen
HD videoconferencing shown on TI OMAP4430
TI talks OMAP4 memory bandwidth
June
ZiiLabs ZMS-20 Dual-core tablet reference designs shown
Android for point-of-sale systems
Cupp computing turns any x86 laptop into an ARM Powered Laptop
Pixel Qi can be solar powered
Shizhu shows Pixel Qi tablets
Walking with Monkeys in the Taiwanese jungle
Qualcomm Dragonboard MSM8260/MSM8660 development board launched
Microsoft shows Metro UI for Windows 8 tablets
view top-20 Computex 2011 videos
My first time flying on the Airbus A380 airplane
iWave Freescale i.MX51/53/27 based PCB designs
Genesi talks ARM hardfloat hardware acceleration
Freescale launches i.MX6 Quad-core processor in tablet reference design
Genesi launches new cheaper i.MX53 based ARM Powered Laptop platform
History and status of Freescale’s Microcontrolers
Freescale i.MX53 development kit
Boundary Devices 12″ i.MX53 Android tablet launched
Linaro status in June 2011
July
My first video of the Archos G9 tablets
August
Google buys Motorola (still processing through worldwide Government regulators needing to accept it)
September
Lenovo A1 7″ Android tablet launched
Toshiba shows awesome 55″ Quad-HD 4K2K screens, I want them to sell it below $1999 now!
Galaxy Note 5.3″ Super AMOLED HD Android smartphone launched, 2, 3
Galaxy Tab 7.7 shown with large Super AMOLED screen, has yet to be released, my guess the screen is too hard/expensive to manufacture for now and they may redesign to fit jacket pockets.
E Ink for credit cards shown
Samsung Galaxy S2 LTE shown, with 4.5″ Super AMOLED Plus screen
Sharp shows 8K4K 85″ HDTV, worlds best TV
My interview with E Ink about the latest news and developments at E Ink
Sony Android tablets P and S launched
Sony PRS-T1 Android E Ink e-reader with infrared dual-touch touchscreen launched
JVC GC-PX10 camcorder launched, has since become my new 1080p camcorder, the JVC Falconbrid processor can maybe soon record 4K2K video at prosumer-prices
Samsung Galaxy Y launched, cheapest Samsung Android phone yet, also see W, Y Pro
Samsung Super Clear LCD compared with Super AMOLED Plus
Huawei Mediapad 7″ 1280×800 Honeycomb Qualcomm MSM8260 tablet launched
3M invests in Pixel Qi
Arnova 10 G2 sold for $99 with newspaper subscription
My review of the sub-$100 N5Zero 5″ capacitive Rk2918 Android tablet
October
Sharp, Toshiba and Sony launch 4K2K Quad-HD TVs and Projectors, mass produce them and sell them below $2000 now, thank you!
Texas Instruments OMAP4460 selected as Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich reference platform for Galaxy Nexus ICS launch
OLPC Summit in San Francisco discuss latest OLPC news in October 2011
Raspberry Pi $25 ARM Powered Desktop launched
I’m Watch Android wrist watch launched
Ubuntu on ARM status in October 2011
Marvell PXA2128 “Tri-Core” tablet reference design launched
Freescale i.MX6 Quad-core Tablet reference design performance demonstrated
ARM Cortex-A7 big.LITTLE announced
ARM Mali Graphics status in October 2011
ARM Cortex-A15 prototype demonstrated
My interview with ARM Inc (USA) President Simon Segars
My interview with ARM CTO Mike Muller at the launch of the ARMv8 64bit architecture, after his keynote
My hands-on with the ARM Powered OLPC XO-1.75
MHL shows the latest HDMI Android features, your smartphone becomes your desktop, your home console and your Set-top-box
November
ARMv8 Technology Preview, a highly technical presentation video
Calxeda EnergyCore ARM Powered server launched with HP Project Moonshot, to disrupt the server market
AppliedMicro X-Gene ARMv8 64bit Server processor demonstrated running on FPGA, a bit more than a year before it’s ready
Mali T-658 announced, PS3 quality graphics in your pocket
My head-mounted augmented video-blogging system demonstrated and explained, 2
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich source code is released, soon smoothly working on every ARM Processor, OMAP4430, ST-Ericsson A9500, Tegra3, Rockchip, ZiiLAbs ZMS-20 more coming..
Samsung announced Exynos 5250 ARM Cortex-A15
December
Archos Home Connect launched, probably best home radio alarm clock
Archos Smart Home Phone, probably best home DECT phone
Ice Cream Sandwich previewed on the Archos 101 G9 Tablet
My first video of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus
Test driving the Renault Twizy electric car
Archos 101 G9 1.5Ghz OMAP4460 Turbo launched, performance possibly around Tegra3 and priced $200 cheaper
Google Analytics launching social media analytics tools
My interview with Yves Behar, probably the top consumer electronics designer in the world
My interview with MG Siegler, the most influential Apple fanboy number 1
My interview with Gabe Rivera, Techmeme.com CEO, most influential tech news aggregator
I was interviewed for 10 minutes on Twit by Leo Laporte and Sarah Lane!, showcasing my head-mounted augmented video-blogging system and voicing some of my tech opinions

Thanks for watching my videos of 2011, Happy New Year!

Geniatech shows Ice Cream Sandwich Set-top-box preview

Posted by Charbax – December 31, 2011
Category: Set-top-boxes, AmLogic, Geniatech, Google TV

Geniatech sent me this video demonstrating a preview version of Ice Cream Sandwich running on one of their Set-top-boxes. The processor is not yet confirmed, I don’t know if it is ICS running on the single-core AmLogic ARM Cortex-A9 AML8726-M which I filmed Genitech a few months ago demonstrating here and here. I think ICS is the version of Android to merge (passthrough or non-passthrough) Google TV features over onto ARM Powered devices with HDMI outputs, ICS set-top-box developments are to be confirmed at CES next week.

Read more about the Geniatech ARM Cortex-A9 set-top-box platform at: geniatech.com