Sep/090
Intel to replace CE3100 with CE4100
Intel’s CE3100 media chip has been behind some of the cooler demos they’ve done here at IDF, and it’s just gotten a big brother, the Atom CE4100. As you’d expect, the big change is the replacement of the CE3100’s Pentium M core with an Atom core, but this thing is actually kind of a monster — it can decode two 1080p video streams with various high-end audio codecs, it adds MPEG-4 support and 3D graphics capability, and it can even capture uncompressed 1080p video. Of course, it’s up to manufacturers and cable companies to actually put all this power to use, but Intel’s promised us some hardware demos from partners — stay tuned.
Aug/090
First regular European HDTV broadcasts
Although HDTV broadcasts had been demonstrated in Europe since the early 1990s, the first regular broadcasts started on January 1, 2004 when Euro1080 launched the HD1 channel with the traditional Vienna New Year’s Concert. Test transmissions had been active since the IBC exhibition in September 2003, but the New Year’s Day broadcast marked the official start of the HD1 channel, and the start of HDTV in Europe.
Euro1080, a division of the Belgian TV services company Alfacam, broadcast HDTV channels to break the pan-European stalemate of “no HD broadcasts mean no HD TVs bought means no HD broadcasts…” and kick-start HDTV interest in Europe.
The HD1 channel was initially free-to-air and mainly comprised sporting, dramatic, musical and other cultural events broadcast with a multi-lingual soundtrack on a rolling schedule of 4 or 5 hours per day.
These first European HDTV broadcasts used the 1080i format with MPEG-2 compression on a DVB-S signal from SES Astra’s 1H satellite at Europe’s main DTH Astra 19.2°E position. Euro1080 transmissions later changed to MPEG-4/AVC compression on a DVB-S2 signal in line with subsequent broadcast channels in Europe.