Fujitsu's H.264 chip encodes/decodes in Full HD -- a world's first

Fujitsu just announced a world's first H.264 chip capable of encoding/decoding 1920 x 1080 (60i/50i) video in real time. The chip features 256MB of onboard FCRAM and ultra low 750mW power draw when encoding video. That means lickity quick, MPEG-2 quality processing with only a third, or half the required storage. The ¥30,000 ($247) MB86H51 chip is available to OEMs starting July 1st after which you'll find it bunged into the latest up-scale, consumer-class video recorders.

[Via Impress]

[Fred Thompson @ May 21st 2007 9:41AM]

Uh...just what is "MPEG-2 quality processing"? There is no required bitrate, quantizer or GOP format for MPEG-2 video. It can be really good or really crappy.

Your choice of words didn't communicate anything other than confusion.

[DorianGray @ May 21st 2007 10:01AM]

Fujitsu, f*ck yeah!!!!

No more multiple-hour VLC conversions of .m2t to mp4. Straight from the dvr to h.264 -- excellent!

[Michael Francis @ May 21st 2007 10:26AM]

Damn, I was just about to say I should build a small microcontroller based cluster with these but at nearly 300 a chip that is not cheap.

[Stranger @ May 21st 2007 10:35AM]

Fred, the words used by the poster makes sense. What he says is that if quality X using MPEG2 requires Y MB than quality X using H.264 requires Y/2 or Y/3 MB.

[rektide @ May 21st 2007 10:39AM]

theres almost certainly something I am missing, but I seem to recall the DaVinci line being able to encode 1080p or at least 720p for quite some time.

$247. rock.

[pete @ May 21st 2007 10:43AM]

Uhh - 1920 x 1080 60i is 1080i, not "Full HD" 1080p which is 1920x1080 60p.

[kevin @ May 21st 2007 12:36PM]

That isn't entirely true. 1080i60 = 1080p24, or full HD. While it is possible to achieve 1080p60 - the other is still considered a full high definition progressive signal.

[J @ May 21st 2007 10:44AM]

OK... so what products are we going to see it in?

[kumbhani @ May 21st 2007 12:27PM]

Personally I'd like to see the chip in some decent 1080 HD camcorders, but it'll most likely make its way to DVDR settop boxes first.

[Craig @ May 21st 2007 10:47AM]

If they would put this chip on a PCI card I would buy it in a heartbeat. I'm currently converting all of my DVDs to h.264 using Handbrake, and even at native definition, with the options I've decided upon, it's taking about 12 hours per DVD. So I've got a second machine also running around the clock but it's still going to take for-ev-er. I bet this chip could do one of my DVDs in about 30 minutes. Somebody please put this chip on a PCI card.

[nitish Jha @ May 21st 2007 11:57AM]

@ craig

look at the elgato H.264 convertor. It does encoding in hardware.
http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file=products_eyetvturbo&PHPSESSID=177dc9104f6940de39136cef52bbb71d

[raj @ Jun 25th 2007 1:09PM]

You can also check the SamrtCapture from FastVDO. Device is as small as a USB memory stick and captures realtime video/audio and encodes using H.264 and AAC
www.fastvdo.com/SmartCapture

[Castle @ May 21st 2007 10:54AM]

256MB of onbaord FCRAM? damn, that's impressive. No wonder it ain't cheap.

[Erwos @ May 21st 2007 12:25PM]

The elgato also only encodes to 800x600 at 3mbit/s - which, while nice, is not really in the problem domain that this chip is trying to solve.

[Joey Geraci @ May 21st 2007 8:37PM]

The elgato is a rebranded instant tv to go, which I bought. While it has OK reviews, it didn't do anything for me, and was highly disappointing. IOW, this is nowhere near the same category

[Anders Printz @ May 21st 2007 12:32PM]

Im sure that it will be in all future graphics
cards from ATI and Nvidia.
Great news !

Anders Printz
http://printz.good.se

[kevin @ May 21st 2007 12:38PM]

I forgot to mention: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080p

[pete @ May 21st 2007 2:48PM]

Kevin, you're wrong.
1080i60 is not equal to 1080p24.
1080i60 , being an interlaced format, is actually a 1920x540 frame 60 times a second. First frame is the odd 540 lines of the original 1080 picture, then the even 540, then the odd, etc...
1080p24 is all 1920x1080 pixels 24 times a second.

[Alex @ May 21st 2007 8:43PM]

So then if you re-interlace them you get 1920x1080 at 30 frames a second, which is a larger number than 24...

So 1920x1080p24 from 60i is posiable, and personaly when I watch that, I'd call it HD TBH.

[Chris McDonald @ May 21st 2007 2:51PM]

Hmm... A flash based HD camcorder maynot be that far off. The power draw is alittle steep for a battery powered device. Add to that the power required for a RAID0 flash array...

[LukeA @ May 21st 2007 3:04PM]

Like the Sanyo Xacti and Panasonic HDC-SD1?

[rektide @ May 22nd 2007 5:44PM]

three quarters of a watt is pretty damned marginal. one nimh AA battery could last nearly four and a half hours: 2800 mAh at 1.2v = 3.36watts-hours / 750mW = 4.48 hours. and i promise you these chips will not be running on a single AA. the idea of the heavy compression is such that you dont need exotic storage array solutions. theres plenty of SDHC which will read/write at 20+ MBps, which should be quite sufficient. not sure if its enough bandwidth for the 720p though (yes, as always, 1080i has less data than 720p).

[Tyler Durden @ May 22nd 2007 11:57AM]

A flash based HD Camera is already out there. The Phantom HD

[otakucode @ May 21st 2007 4:11PM]

What on earth makes you guys think we'll ever see this device used in any product? Several companies have had chips out that will do MPEG-2 encoding of 1080i content for years... and they're not used. DVRs record an MPEG-2 stream directly as it is broadcast. They don't do any of the encoding.

This chip would be useful for one thing - encoding from an ANALOG source to h.264. That is the primary fear of the MPAA. That is why we don't have any reasonable way to capture HD content. Go ahead, search around for a capture card that takes component video, DVI, or HDMI and encodes it into MPEG-2. The only ones that exist are upwards of $10k and intended for TV stations.

This chip will be used in consumer devices over the MPAAs dead body. The only light of day it will see will be in devices that cost more than a car that companies will use to produce content for the iTunes store or something like that.

[Rick Lyon @ May 21st 2007 6:09PM]

Video recorder as in consumer based DVRs? They down rez when they record, so what would be the point as consumers can't record HD and play back HD without D* or cable.

[theclaw @ May 21st 2007 11:57PM]

VGA monitors capable of 1920x1080 60p have been on the consumer market for purchase since at least 1998. The HD content providers are falling behind.

[OddManOut @ May 22nd 2007 12:05AM]

"I'm currently converting all of my DVDs to h.264...it's taking about 12 hours per DVD"

Well 'Craig', anyone who started ripping DVDs back in the unfettered Napster days of yore (myself included) can feel your pain. At least one of your machines on 24/7, having to wait 12 hours to make sure the AV sync was on...

But I'm curious, why are you ripping DVDs to H.264 ? Unless they're hi def isn't it kind of pointless ?

I'm genuinely hoping you or someone else will explain what all the hoopla is over h.264 and VC-1 and the like...

If anyone wants to ejimacate me, I'm all ears...

[dgnome @ May 22nd 2007 12:48AM]

Someone said that there is no reasonable way to capture HD content, that's wrong. Digital tv broadcasts can be captured as they are. What the fuzz is about with h.264 is that it is a heavy codec capable of really awesome video compression. I've had requests for building embedded video surveillance devices and this would be the sh*t for semiconductor storage. I would also very much like to have one, ore more, of those chips on a PCI-board..

[lobosrul @ May 22nd 2007 10:28AM]

1) With proper inverse telecine a progressive 1080p@24fps video can be made from 1080i, if the show your watching/encoding was originally filmed @ 24fps. All movies, just about all dramas, and most sitcoms are.

2) The point of h.264/VC-1 is that they are substantially more effiecient than divx/xvid and much more so than mpeg-2. A DVD that was originally encoded at ~5.5mbps in MPEG-2 can be encoded with h.264 at a much smaller bitrate than with little loss in quality. In my experience 2mbps leaves no loss in quality.

3) Digital TV from OTA can be captured as it is. Things are much more complicated from set top boxes (SAT or Cable). Recording uncompressed from component or DVI/HDMI cables, while possible, creates a GIANT file. Several 100 GB for a one hour show. Firewire capture from certain boxes is possible (in mpeg-2) but the cable co can encrypt that signal at their whim.

[Ben @ May 22nd 2007 3:31PM]

1080i is useless. One of the major goals of HD technology is to get rid of flicker, and 1080i flickers - by providing a full frame at a rate of 30 / second, we're right back into TV flicker land.

540p, 720p, and 1080p are where you want to be for serious HD. Without 1080p processing, I wouldn't give this chip a second look, and I doubt anyone else who has a fully capable HD system would feel any different. Once you've experienced full progressive scan, you're pretty well convinced. Even 540p is better than 1080i !!!

[Andika @ May 29th 2007 10:39PM]

Saya Andika, dari Indonesia, mau menambahkan:
Saya suka kepada hardware ini.

[scott @ May 30th 2007 5:43PM]

Great they have a chip. But who's going to make the board and its already being done. LSI launched a chip at NAB and they we way behind the people aready doing it by 3 years. plus being a hardware encoder they are going to be the same way for a while. With the Hardware accelerator guys out there the can keep upgrading and have a higher quality. Anybody can do real time if you dont mind having video that looks like crap.