http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/ Engadget Comments for The processor in the TiVo Premiere is over twice as fast as the Series3 http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/Mar 9th 2010 6:05PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/Mar 10th 2010 8:54AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/Mar 9th 2010 6:31PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/
I'm not. Their strategy is to recoup the cost of the box with your subscription, just like cell phones. Microsoft never made a profit on sales of the original Xbox and I believe the same was true at least initially with the Xbox 360; same with Sony and the PS3. Of course companies like Microsoft and Sony can afford to do that by increasing their profit margin on products in other parts of their business (software and TVs, respectively).]]>Mar 10th 2010 9:36AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/Mar 9th 2010 6:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/Mar 9th 2010 6:48PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/
-Brian]]>Mar 10th 2010 2:10AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/Mar 10th 2010 8:58AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/
The latest cable company DVRs from Motorola and Samsung feature newer, faster DVR CPUs, but they still run the same old software; no changes were made to leverage the improved performance.

Creating new software for an embedded platform takes time, but it is also a question of priorities; the vast majority of cable and satellite subscribers still have older DVRs. When 90-95% of customers still have the older, slower boxes, it can be difficult to justify substantial investment in new software for the 5-10% of boxes that can actually run it.]]>Mar 9th 2010 6:51PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/Mar 9th 2010 6:59PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/
Since this is embedded hardware you don't always need raw processing power to implement cool features. Decoding H.264 1080p video is a perfect example. ]]>Mar 9th 2010 7:00PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/Mar 9th 2010 7:54PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/
Wrong about what? I didn't say anything about MPEG. I said that a purpose built chip could decode H.264 1080p even if it didn't have a lot of raw processing power. ]]>Mar 9th 2010 7:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/
The CPU isn't the only factor in system performance. There's also memory bandwidth, bus bandwidth, 2D and 3D performance, and I/O. Memory and system bandwidth were bottlenecks on older DVRs,

The U-Verse DVR benefits from the fact that it has no tuners to consume system resources. As an IPTV box, it is more of a media streamer device. The HD streams from the AT&T gateway are only 5-6Mbps, which keep I/O requirements to a minimum.

As mentioned by another poster, the DVRs at the top of the list are based on dual-core solutions. Some system operations will benefit from the multi-core support in Linux, but the DVR software must be rewritten with multi-threading for full benefit. It is unlikely that TiVo will take full advantage of both cores at launch, so performance optimization is likely something that will occur over time.

If you were to compare 2D performance, the rankings similar to those in the CPU chart. The 2D core generally runs at half the CPU frequency, but the newer SoCs are able to process twice as many pixels per clock.

If you were to compare 3D performance, then the chart would look quite different. Of the newer DVRs, only the TiVo Premiere, Moxi, and Dish ViP922 feature a GPU. I'm told this is the fastest GPU available in a Broadcom SoC as of late last year, but I haven't been able to obtain any performance numbers. Nor have I been able to confirm if or when this GPU will support Flash acceleration under Linux (Adobe added support for GPU acceleration in Flash 10.1).]]>Mar 9th 2010 8:35PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/Mar 10th 2010 12:55AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/
The only issue with the comparison is both the phone and the TiVo have dedicated hardware that is independent of their processor power that allow them to fulfill the tasks that they are expected to handle. So its not really a fair comparison, just a good way to get an idea of what kind of processing we are dealing with.]]>Mar 11th 2010 9:37AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/Mar 10th 2010 10:35PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/Mar 22nd 2010 7:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/the-processor-in-the-tivo-premier-is-over-twice-as-fast-as-the-s/Mar 22nd 2010 8:19PM