The Great Apple Video Encoder Attack of 2007: Cupertino plans to add H.264 hardware support to its entire line.
I love Cringley's columns but he's often wrong. Still, this is interesting. It's not mentioned in the article, but do you think there is any way this could be part of a "trusted computer" type gambit?
I don't know enough about trusted computing to know how this relates.
In the PC world, H.264 acceleration is part of the GPU. And the target is real-time decode of HD. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple made sure all their machines could do real-time HD decode.
Encoding is another matter. It is more expensive. $50 is a reasonable number to toss out there. Low volume, high quality solutions will be orders of magnitude more expensive. Very high volume solutions (e.g. video encoding embedded in still cameras) will be cheaper than that number. I'm skeptical about that part of it. Although it would be a bold move.
I just mean that Apple wants to sell video, but Hollywood doesn't want to give them movies to sell without some way to protect their IP. Dedicated decoding hardware makes sense - just in terms of taking load off the CPU - but I'm wondering if having dedicated hardware decode might also be a way to design stronger DRM?
Oh. The key to a successful DRM scheme is to plug all the holes that will allow the bits to go free. (Apparently this is a big part of what Vista is about.) A hardware decode could be made more secure than a software decode, since it is less transparent, less susceptible to reverse engineering, etc. However, a real-time HW encoder is a major risk to any content managment scheme.
Most of the message board talk is assuming the hardware encoder is there because of AppleTV, which has no provision for the addition of codecs (it just plays one, as of now unnameable format - but everyone assumes it is h.264.) If all Macs ship with a hardware encoder then all Macs will be able to re-encode any QT supported video into h.264 on the fly in order to send it to AppleTV. Since QT supports third party codecs (divx, etc...) this explains how AppleTV can only support one codec but will still be able to play all the videos on someone's Mac.
I guess that makes sense.
Okay. It keeps Apple TV cheap, except for the fact that you need a new Mac. I don't know much about Apple TV, but given its disk capacity I assume it's a peripheral rather than a stand-alone device. I don't know if I would have gone that route. A stand-alone device that works even better as a peripheral seems like a better approach, given their market share for computers. Again, I'm making assumptions.
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- mark 3-09-2007 11:06 pm
I love Cringley's columns but he's often wrong. Still, this is interesting. It's not mentioned in the article, but do you think there is any way this could be part of a "trusted computer" type gambit?
- jim 3-10-2007 1:05 am
I don't know enough about trusted computing to know how this relates.
In the PC world, H.264 acceleration is part of the GPU. And the target is real-time decode of HD. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple made sure all their machines could do real-time HD decode.
Encoding is another matter. It is more expensive. $50 is a reasonable number to toss out there. Low volume, high quality solutions will be orders of magnitude more expensive. Very high volume solutions (e.g. video encoding embedded in still cameras) will be cheaper than that number. I'm skeptical about that part of it. Although it would be a bold move.
- mark 3-10-2007 1:59 am
I just mean that Apple wants to sell video, but Hollywood doesn't want to give them movies to sell without some way to protect their IP. Dedicated decoding hardware makes sense - just in terms of taking load off the CPU - but I'm wondering if having dedicated hardware decode might also be a way to design stronger DRM?
- jim 3-10-2007 2:53 am
Oh. The key to a successful DRM scheme is to plug all the holes that will allow the bits to go free. (Apparently this is a big part of what Vista is about.) A hardware decode could be made more secure than a software decode, since it is less transparent, less susceptible to reverse engineering, etc. However, a real-time HW encoder is a major risk to any content managment scheme.
- mark 3-10-2007 3:57 am
Most of the message board talk is assuming the hardware encoder is there because of AppleTV, which has no provision for the addition of codecs (it just plays one, as of now unnameable format - but everyone assumes it is h.264.) If all Macs ship with a hardware encoder then all Macs will be able to re-encode any QT supported video into h.264 on the fly in order to send it to AppleTV. Since QT supports third party codecs (divx, etc...) this explains how AppleTV can only support one codec but will still be able to play all the videos on someone's Mac.
I guess that makes sense.
- jim 3-12-2007 8:41 pm
Okay. It keeps Apple TV cheap, except for the fact that you need a new Mac. I don't know much about Apple TV, but given its disk capacity I assume it's a peripheral rather than a stand-alone device. I don't know if I would have gone that route. A stand-alone device that works even better as a peripheral seems like a better approach, given their market share for computers. Again, I'm making assumptions.
- mark 3-12-2007 11:18 pm