Category: Google TV

ARM Powered Sony Google TV NSZ-GS7 launched

Posted by – February 1, 2012

Sony is launching this cheaper and better ARM Powered Google TV Set-top-box, it may be using the new Dual-core Marvell Armada 1500 ARM Processor, let me know in the comments if you know which ARM Processor Sony is using.

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

Posted by – January 14, 2012

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.

Always Innovating OMAP4 HDMI Dongle


Always Innovating fits the Texas Instruments OMAP4 motherboard with all the needed features for a Desktop, Set-top-box and 3D home console into a USB stick sized device that connects to the HDMI port of your HDTV and gets power from USB. It has Bluetooth for Bluetooth keyboards and game controllers. Its USB can do USB host.

Optimum CloudAlive Freescale i.MX53 Set-top-box

Posted by – January 11, 2012

Optimum Semiconductor Technologies Inc shows this single-core Freescale i.MX53 ARM Cortex-A8 and single-core AmLogic ARM Cortex-A9 based Android Set-top-box for $100-$120 depending on order quantity.

Marvell Armada 1500, ARM Powered Google TV

Posted by – January 9, 2012

This is the new ARM Powered Google TV solution ready to ship in full production early Q2 2012 in set-top-boxes and built-in into HDTVs by all manufacturers wanting to build and sell cheap ARM Powered Google TV solutions. The performance is faster than Intel’s discontinued Google TV solution, this one lowers the cost, lowers the power consumption, makes it more compact all the while including all the HDMI input/output and IR blaster features of a full Google TV.

ARM Powered Google TV launching at CES 2012!

Posted by – January 6, 2012

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

Geniatech shows Ice Cream Sandwich Set-top-box preview

Posted by – December 31, 2011

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

Coupoint.net $65 1Ghz Single-core HiSilicon ARM Cortex-A9 Android set-top-box

Posted by – September 4, 2011

Here’s the first time that I see an Android set-top-box with the new HiSilicon ARM Cortex-A9 Single-core processor made by Huawei. This seems to be a pretty smooth Android set-top-box implementation for the price, though obviously, just as for all other Android set-top-boxes, this will only really be useful once the Google TV software is finally open sourced for ARM Powered devices, which is expected to happen next month when Ice Cream Sandwich is released and open sourced. It’s very interesting to see this new HiSilicon ARM Cortex-A9 processor from Huawei.

20 years ago today, Linux was released

Posted by – August 26, 2011

On August 26th 1991, Linus Torvalds released Linux in the comp.os.minix newsgroup:

Hello everybody out there using minix –
I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
since april, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat
(same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons)
among other things).
I’ve currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work.
This implies that I’ll get something practical within a few months, and
I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions
are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them 🙂
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes – it’s free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have :-(.

The creation of Linux was possible thanks to the Socialist system in Finland that provides free unlimited University education to its students, where Linus Torvalds was able to mess around with his own personal ideas for 8 and a half years for free:

Some talk by Linus Torvalds about Linux 10 years ago on the Charlie Rose TV show:

While Linux totally dominates in your smart phone (Android), in your TV/set-top-box, in the worlds servers that host all websites, in powering Government and Industry infrastructure, I believe that with Chrome OS and OLPC we are also soon likely to see Linux dominate for the home and enterprise desktop/laptop OS ecosystem.

Honeywld Marvell Armada 1000 88DE3010 “Berlin” based Android Set-top-box

Posted by – June 8, 2011

Here’s one of the first Marvell Berlin (Armada 1000) based Android Set-top-boxes I have yet seen, firmware is still to be finalized but they can start shipping this hardware this month.

A further update on Linaro status at Computex 2011


At Computex 2011, Linaro gave an update on their status, with some new technical demos showing graphics and other hardware acceleration that thy are working on.

$60 Cortex-A9 Android Set-top-box

Posted by – June 1, 2011

The price is a bulk price, at least 300 pieces need to be ordered, does not include the chosen remote controller that can go from a couple dollars to twenty dollars depending on what type of remote control is used. Also there are different memory and other components that can be configured. Most importantly is the idea to communicate that an ARM Cortex-A9 powered set-top-box could potentially run Google TV basic for ARM as soon as that one is released. It depends if Google decides to support their Google TV implementation on the AmLogic 800Mhz single core implementation, it depends if Google is interested at all in supporting HDMI-out only until their open source Ice Cream Sandwich and allow everyone to make whichever Google TV on ARM implementations they want anyways.

ARM Powered Google TV now confirmed officially by Google

Posted by – May 14, 2011

You got the tip from me from an anonymous source here since January (I have been speculating about it (2) (3) (4) for over a year), clues about it from ARM President Tudor Brown last year in November, and re-confirming rumors through Samsung in February, Google announced at Google I/O this week that Ice Cream Sandwich combines Android, Honeycomb and Google TV into one release (thus Google TV features on ARM), now it’s being reported by PC World that Google TV product manager Rishi Chandra is confirming the ARM Powered Google TV platform like this:

for the price issue, Chandra said that Google has now qualified ARM chips to be used to run the Google TV software, instead of just the Intel Atom chips that currently power the Revue. Moore’s Law–the inevitable increase in chip performance driven by increasing transistor density–will push the performance of the cost-optimized ARM chips up high enough to compete with Atom, while helping drive down the overall platform price, Chandra said.

I have thus far video-blogged over 60 ARM Powered Set-top-boxes from all the consumer electronics trade shows over the past 2 years, most are running Android, all of which could in theory run the Google TV software.

Of course, it is up to Google to decide what kind of hardware requirements they want to enfore for Google TV on ARM, if they want those to only feature the full suite of HDMI pass-through features, meaning HDMI input and output, Infrared blasters (to change the channel on your cable/satellite set-top-box), USB hosts, Bluetooth and more, then that would disqualify just about all of the ARM Powered set-top-boxes that I have filmed thus far. I wouldn’t know how much more those hardware features require, and perhaps that requires an ARM Cortex-A9 at the minimum to run all the overlay user interface features and preferably 1080p at 60fps support at the minimum.

I think it is more likely and more logical that Google will decide to be as open as possible about Google TV on ARM, and thus support all the SoC that are currently being used and that will most likely be used. I think that means Google TV on ARM could work in “AppleTV/Roku mode”, meaning no HDMI inputs, just the Google TV experience of bringing the Web and WebTV on the TV on this separate HDMI port to your HDTV. That is why I expect there to be two kinds of Google TV on ARM:

1. Basic Google TV on ARM, this is HDMI output only, Bluetooth or RF/USB keyboards with mouse pad accessory can be used. This solution could work on 100% of the ARM Powered Set-top-boxes that I have filmed. And I believe this will be included turning every Android Smartphone/Tablet with Ice Cream Sandwich and every Tablet with Honeycomb 3.1 into a Google TV “for free”. See the Google Android Team’s response to my question submitted on the possibility of turning all Android devices into free Google TV devices when HDMI is used:

2. The Full ARM Powered Google TV experience, including HDMI pass-through, IR blaster, USB hosts, Ethernet, etc.. Since Chris DiBona answers to my question above “There’s all this other stuff that goes into a Google TV that isn’t in a phone”, well then, the Full ARM Powered Google TV will be that type that does it all. But that should not prevent an Android device with a basic HDMI output and not much else to still display many if not most of the Google TV UI features right there on the HDTV.

3. There is also a third scenario that I am envisioning, Google might use their Android Hardware division to plan out a new type of Multimedia TV Docking system for Android, using nothing more than HDMI, USB slave/host and evt MHL (that combines both into one Micro-USB connector). Basically the idea here is a cheap TV Dock that should work with most if not all Android Smartphones that have HDMI, USB (or MHL) to turn those into full Google TV, thus using the USB slave/host to transmit the right infos back and forward and feature in that Dock the right HDMI input and output, IR blaster, USB host duplicators, Ethernet connector, charging and more. The idea is a new Google Open Accessory design that could sell for $49 to dock any Android Smartphone with HDMI/USB or MHL and thus turn those into full Google TV. A solution which could evt also turn any ARM Powered Set-top-box into a full Google TV box also with adding the HDMI in/out, IR and more to those. Maybe it could be called the Google TV adapter, converter or extender.

Here’s the 56 minute session on some of the Google TV Honeycomb 3.1 upgrades and development tools at Google I/O:

3 things Google TV needs from Google I/O in 4 days

Posted by – May 6, 2011

1. Support ARM Processors, to be in sub-$100 box. Even run a full Google TV UI “mode” from the HDMI output of every new Android smartphone (expect Google TV to become a part of Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich?)

2. Support apps like BitTorrent/RSS, Seedbox management with SFTP, Rapidshare/Megaupload streaming, make it the easiest way to pirate all movies and TV shows with a remote control on the TV.

3. Unlock Desktop User Agent in the Flash plugin. The only reason TV websites can block Google TV is because of the Flash plugin not hiding itself as a Flash-for-Desktop user agent. It’s only a question of Adobe and Google making the decision (if the rights holders keep blocking them), they can make Google TV unblockable. Even make it easy to sign up for fast and reliable proxy services all over the world if certain online web TV are being region blocked (make it easy for the world to stream US based Hulu/Netflix/Viacom/etc, UK based BBC, French based France Television, etc..).

I expect that Google is going to announce all 3 at Google I/O. What do you expect Google TV 2.0 is going to be like?

I think the Google TV software needs to be in every cheap media player, in every set-top-box, and basically, it needs to make it easy for every TV user to easily get access to all web video in as few clicks and as little typing as possible. It may bring a keyboard into every living room, but that usage needs to be as seamless and easy as possible, start typing the name of the show and hit enter to tune in to that show, show options, live, on-demand, legal free/paid/ads if available, “illegal” BitTorrent RSS-subscribe Seedbox/SFTP-service-for-anonymous one click reliable add to queue. Another cool app would be Sopcast, and also the first use of Sopcast through seedboxes for “illegal” 10mbit/s or more live streaming of every TV channel in the world, basically make it as seamless as possible for people to cut the cable/satellite cord and replace it with full freedom of on-demand media choices if they so want to, all designed for leanback mode.

Dehoo shows a Skyviia based Android Set-top-box

Posted by – April 20, 2011

Here’s another new Skyviia ARM9 powered Android Set-top-box.

Bonux launches ARM Powered Android Set-top-boxes


They have Cortex-A8 and ARM9 based set-top-boxes, with 1080p YouTube streaming support, full codecs support (they claim), Android UI, could possibly upgrade to Google TV UI when that source code is available.

Rockchip Rk2918 in a Set-top-box


Rockchip now provides a Set-top-box reference design based on their new RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 processor. This could power upcoming Google TV on ARM for cheap.

United One Telechips Android Set-top-box


They dual-boot a type of embedded Linux for video playback and they also do Android on the TV.

Performance test on AmLogic ARM Cortex-A9 Android Set-top-box


Shenzhen Amidia Electronics Co Ltd makes this AmLogic ARM Cortex-A9 800Mhz Single Core Set-top-box, this video features the performance of this device, web browsing on a HDTV and doing other stuff.

Uptek International Co Ltd makes Android TV Set-top-box


Uptek explains how they are doing their Android based set-top-box with customized UI solutions, and even VOD stuff.