A powerful "core" HD player mainstream solution introduction

HD players are probably no strangers to most HD enthusiasts and audio and video players. As a playback medium for HD movies, they have become a must-have machine for audio and video enthusiasts and HD players with their convenient and easy operation, powerful decoding capabilities, convenient expansion of audio and video files, and convenient resource storage and exchange.

High-definition players are increasingly favored by video and audio players

In fact, there were high-definition players in China before 2008, but few people knew about them before 2008. They were not widely promoted until the end of the year. There are two reasons for this. First, the 2008 Olympic Games was the first commercial high-definition broadcast in China, which allowed more people to hear about and actually feel the appeal of high-definition images.

High-definition Olympic broadcast enriches high-definition programs

The second is that in 2008, the optical storage format war between Sony Blu-ray and Toshiba Red-ray, which lasted for several years, was won by Blu-ray. The unification of large-capacity optical storage formats has greatly accelerated the release of the latest high-definition versions of movies by major film companies around the world, and the richness of high-definition audio and video resources has greatly increased. Even from that time on, some blockbuster DVD versions and high-definition Blu-ray versions were released at the same time. This also allows movie lovers to get in touch with the latest high-definition movies.

Blu-ray Unification provides more high-definition resources

By 2012, it has become commonplace for everyone to only realize HD playback on HD players. 3D file playback, intelligent system, free installation of software, tablet remote control and even remote control and other functions have been realized on HD players. For powerful computers, we all know that they need a powerful CPU, so for HD players, they also need a powerful core. The following editor will introduce to you the "cores" of several major HD players on the market.

For the little crab logo in the left picture below, I believe that friends who know a little about computer hardware or have disassembled and installed a motherboard will have a sense of déjà vu. That’s right, this “little crab” has almost climbed onto the integrated network card and integrated sound card chips of more than 90% of the motherboards on the market.

The little crab familiar to hardware players

The real name of "Little Crab" is "Realtek Semiconductor", which is an internationally renowned IC design company located in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The company is positioned as a research and development and design company for integrated circuit products. The most well-known products are the integrated sound card and integrated network card mentioned above.

In the HD player market, Realtek's chip solutions also occupy a considerable share, especially in the past five years, its solutions have almost occupied an absolute share of the HD player market. The biggest features of its products are full functions, full formats, and high cost performance, so many of its product solutions are used in the market.

The RTD1073ES solution, which once occupied half of the market share of high-definition players

As the latest flagship solution in 2012, RTD1186 has powerful performance, 750Mhz main frequency, 512MB RAM, 4GB large ROM. Compared with the previous generation solutions, 1186 has reached a higher level in terms of high-definition playback, network video, 3D, image quality, sound effects, comprehensive applications, overall performance, etc.

Compared with the previous generation mainstream solution RTD1185, the chip core processing frequency of RTD1186 reaches 750MHz, which is much higher than RTD1185. The memory has also been greatly improved, reaching 512MB, and the flash memory is up to 4GB. At the same time, it also has a built-in USB3.0 input terminal, which can meet the transmission of large-capacity high-speed videos. The most outstanding part of the RTD1186 solution is the built-in 3D graphics processing chip, which can perform hardware decoding of 3D images and even allow users to play 3D games smoothly, which is not available in the RTD1185 solution.

The current hottest RTD1186

In addition, due to the greatly improved performance of the chip, the latest high-definition players that use the RTD1186 solution have built-in Android systems, which allow free installation of software, facilitate the expansion of various games and software, and allow free browsing of the Internet, greatly expanding the functions of the high-definition player.

Sigma Design SMP8642

When we talk about the RTD series solutions, we have to mention another chip solution brand, Sigma Design, also known as Sigma in China. Its SMP series has been one of the mainstream chip solutions in the high-definition player market in recent years, and is also the main competitor of the RTD series solutions.

SMP8642

SMP8642 has always enjoyed a good reputation among high-definition players who pursue effects, especially the original disc menu support and high-definition source code output, which gives it an advantage in the competition with its rival Realtek.

The following are the main features of SMP8642/8643:

* Blu-ray players ? IPTV ? Cable ? Network players (DMAs)

Supporting technologies:

* Blu-ray, AVCHD, HDV, DV, DVD- Video, DVD-R/-RW/+R/+RW, SVCD, VCD, CD/-R/-RW, Picture CD (JPEG) media formats[page]

* ATSC, DVB, ARIB and IPTV

* Audio DSP supports wide variety of audio codecs

* Security CPU supports wide variety of conditional access (CA) and digital rights management (DRM) solutions

Video decoding:

* MPEG-4.10 (H.264) BP@L3, MP@L4.0* and HP@L4.0*

* SMPTE 421M (VC-1) MP@HL and AP@L3

* WMV9 MP@HL

* MPEG-2 MP@HL

* MPEG-4.2 ASP@L5 (up to HD, 1-point GMC)

*AVS Jizhun profile@L2.0, 4.0 and 6.0**

* DV (IEC 61834 and SMPTE 314M)

* L4.1 for Blu-ray applications

** up to 20 Mbps for L4.0 and 40 Mbps for L6.0

marvell88DE3010

Compared with the first two solutions, I am afraid that most HD players are relatively unfamiliar with this third solution.

Marvell Technology Group[1] is an American chip manufacturer specializing in the manufacture of storage, communication and consumer electronics ICs. Founded in 1995 in Santa Clara, California, the company ranked 18th among the top 20 semiconductor manufacturers in the world in 2010.

Marvell 88DE3010 can also be considered an unsuccessful chip. The reason is that Marvell designed 88DE3010 not for the player market, but for the Blu-ray player market. The rogue 88DE3010 did not have an integrated servo chip so it was defeated by other Blu-ray chips. It failed in the Blu-ray player market, but it was more than enough for the player market without a servo.

88DE3010

Take a look inside the 88DE3010:

The hardware configuration is luxurious. In addition to the dual core, the video decoding, audio decoding, and image decoding are all implemented by hardware. In particular, with the addition of an audio DSP, this chip has the function of an audio decoder. Special attention should be paid to the QDEO video transmission processing, which is the reason why other chips cannot compare with this chip. The same source can achieve better picture quality through QDEO transmission processing, which is the most important reason why Marvell 88DE3010 can be a high-end player. With the audio DSP (the frequency of 500 MHz is quite powerful), there is no problem in decoding Dolby TrueHD and DTS MA. In terms of video processing, 88DE3010 supports dual-channel high-definition decoding, and it is natural to support 3D decoding and playback.

Although it entered the hard disk high-definition player market relatively late, the 88DE3010 has gradually gained favor in the mid-to-high-end product market due to its excellent sound and picture quality, and more and more products using this solution have appeared.

Representative model: BiVision 8078M