Looks Like We May Be Able To Get Hd Out

[transmition]

I recently came across this today: http://sewelldirect.com/Sewell-Minideck-USB-to-DVI-Display-Adapter.asp

As the title implies, it is an adapter that allows you to connect an HDMI / DVI / VGA cable through USB.

The downsides:
-It is $100
-I don't know if it is linux compatible

 

[Vorporeal]

I think people have suggested these before, and the issue is that we don't really have the processing power to drive a USB video card. You're pushing a LOT of data over USB, which uses system bandwidth, and the CPU'll likely have to do a bunch of processing to get it out there.

 

[lulzfish]

Yes, between the decoding of HD video and the shoveling of raw video data into a graphics card, the CPU will be unable to keep up.
All this obsession over HD.. Is it some kind of marketing bullet-point we want to get?
Pandora vs. Pandora HD

Big freaking deal. We have 480p on the main screen, and the games will be written to 480p. There's no magical advantage to higher resolution. We just don't have the CPU for it. Worry about something else.

 

[Yoyobuae]

By the way, the Pandora will be able to play 480p (or similar) videos without much trouble, right? Maybe also rescaling it to fit screen if not exactly 480p (else would need to re-encode videos that are slightly smaller/bigger otherwise).

One of the uses I'm looking forward to is playing video via TV out to my SD CRT TV (who needs HD =P).

 

[lulzfish]

Well, the BeagleBoard can play 720p @ 30 fps using some special DSP codecs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdnDpH3543Q

So 480p on identical hardware with less-than-optimal DSP codecs and maybe the CPU taking some of the load, should be easy.

 

[ben_dash]

There's no magical advantage to higher resolution.

I personally don't care about HD video on an external screen but I would like to be able to run a higher resolution external display for Ultra Mobile PC applications lik:

1 - multiple xterms (yes I know I can use screen but sometimes I'd like more physical real estate)

2 - displaying LaTeX Beamer PDF presentations (although any presentation that requires hires will have text too small for the audience to read)

3 - VNC/RD screens (if there were a decent FLOSS VNC client that had video scaling and zooming then displaying a 1600x1200 VNC session on an 800x480 screen would be ok).

4 - displaying external remote xwindows on your local desktop (perhaps you want to run some CPU hungry GUI app on your Corei7 and merely display it on your Pandora for some reason)

10fps, or maybe even 5fps, on an external VGA/DVI at 1280x1024 would be sufficient for those applications.

 

[skater_j10]

It's funny that I came across the same link as Transmition and it certainly sparked my interest for applying it to the Pandora. I guess i'm not the only one that checks up on the gadget blogs (engadget/gizmodo). Actually, it was Engadget that re-sparked my interest in the Pandora project when they posted about the DC emulator coming to the Pandora. I was hyped on the Pandora about a year or two ago when I found out about the underground emulating handheld device movement [It may not be that underground but to me it was]. I was first introduced to the Wiz and then I heard about the Pandora; the solution that I've been always looking for. At the time I didn't know they were taking pre-orders and I ended up focusing on other projects and situations that Life throws at you and eventually forgot about it. Then Engadget came along with their beautiful posts and, viola, I'm now a First Batcher.

Anyway......Back on topic -> I ended up looking at the specs for a lower rez. adapter from the same company, Sewell, and found that the minimum processor speed is 1.2 GHz. I looked back to the Pandora specs and it seems that we are at about half of that [ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU & 430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core] so I'm guessing that Lulzfish is right.

The reason for my interest in such a device is that I'd like to hook the Pandora up to a projector, although S-Video is plenty good enough for my standards, it is nice to have the option to display in a higher rez. if I'd like to some general computing/presenting. Ok, here's my dream for the Pandora: [probably not the right thread to post in but hey most threads in these forums go off topic so what the heck] I want the Pandora to be my own modular PC. What I mean is that I'd like to be able to hook it up to a projector and play retro multiplayer games with my friends, then be able to unhook it from there and plug it into a MAME station and play games on my own (or two player) with an arcade interface, and then have the option to just flop on the couch and surf/play games/listen to tunes/misc. computing on my own with the unit peripheral-less. My idea, and it's probably shared with plenty of others, is that the Pandora will be my all-in-one gadget solution, and although it will have it's limitations [I don't think we'll be seeing the Pandora on a GSM Network anytime soon] it's nice to know that all my classic games will all be in one place and I won't need multiple lunch box sized consoles to play my games/surf the web/takes notes......etc.

Sorry everyone for the long post I just needed to download some thoughts I've been spinning around.

 

[lulzfish]

the minimum processor speed is 1.2 GHz. I looked back to the Pandora specs and it seems that we are at about half of that [ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU & 430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core] so I'm guessing that Lulzfish is right.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_myth

Lulzfish is always right.
Anyway, the MHz myth says that between different processors designs, and especially between different architectures, the clock speed becomes meaningless.

We might have more power than a 1.2 GHz Pentium 3 and less than 0.4 GHz Core i7. Who knows. The whole "minimum CPU rating" is always bullshit anyway, because Intel redesigns their CPUs regularly and AMD always has a different design.

The only way to know is to test it on a BeagleBoard or IRL Pandora, unless someone here knows what "1.2 GHz" means in requirements-speak.

 

[transmition]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_myth

[Citation Needed]

 

[ashdjones]

Anyone fancy benchmarking the Pandora then? Hardinfo even compares your machine to other CPU results.

 

[Vorporeal]

When companies like this mention required processor speeds, they're always talking about required speed for an x86 processor. Assuming this even would work on ARM, you can't just use the same clock speed requirements, as the architectures are quite different (and they will differ in processing power per clock cycle).

EDIT: Oops, didn't refresh the page before posting.

EDIT2:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_myth

[Citation Needed]

That very well may be the dumbest post I've seen on these forums. Congratulations, you're an idiot.

 

[mali]

We've got nBench ByteMark results somewhere on these boards.

 

[Dead1nside]

Well, the BeagleBoard can play 720p @ 30 fps using some special DSP codecs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdnDpH3543Q

So 480p on identical hardware with less-than-optimal DSP codecs and maybe the CPU taking some of the load, should be easy.

Why can't we use the Beagle Board's DSP codecs?

 

[Vorporeal]

My guess is due to licensing issues. Most well-written codecs are developed by people who really know what they're doing, and they don't just give that stuff away for free. I vaguely remember discussing DSP codecs a while back and someone mentioning how they were quite expensive, and we'd really just have to write our own if we wanted them.

 

[lulzfish]

It's possible that we could, but they only made MPEG-4 and H.264 codecs according to that video, whereas I might want to decode Theora, so the codecs for that could be sub-par. Or over-par. Less than perfect.

 

[mali]

http://code.entropywave.com/leonora/

 

[j.pickens]

I think that many threads about video output seem to be asking for is an improved video out capacity.
S-video is a format which will not translate well from the crisp digital 800 by 480 pixel Pandora LCD display to analog S-video.
So, the question as I would pose it is whether any USB video output device will be able to be made to work at any resolution.
For someone wanting to run a digital HDMI TV or VGA monitor, its the digital part which will vastly improve the viewing.
I would venture to say that a 320 by 240 pixel digital output would beat the visual experience of the S-video analog output on one of these type digital displays.

So, forget about the 480i or 720p questions. I think two things would need to be answered:

1. Is there a USB video device which can be made to output digital VGA or HDMI video using the Pandora's Linux and hardware?

2. If #1 is true, then what resolution and framerate is reasonably possible?

 

[second exodous]

I can't find any projects where anyone is outputting HD video from a Beagle Board through USB. I'm sure when the Pandora is out someone will try and figure it out.

The next wave of Ti chips will have 1080p video output. Lets hope that Ti does a OMAP4 BB and maybe we'll get a 1080p open handheld in the future. For right now I can live without my handheld plugging into my 1080p monitor and replacing my PC for 95% of what I do on my computer. That day will come, but I don't think I'll be fine with my Pandora just having the video out that it does have.