Revolution to have detachable DVD?
- Thread starter basanti
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ad hominem means either 'appealing to emotions rather than reason and logic' or 'arguing based on opponent's failings rather than the strengths of one's own case'.
*cough*topic's DVD on nintendo's console*cough*
Evil_Cloud
Veteran
Self contained = internal
I don't think Nintendo would be going all out on another disc drive or DVD decoder device because they think that it is a huge selling point, they are putting DVD playback in probably because it is practically free since the disc drive already reads DVD's.
BTW, I would love to work at IGN Revolution, you wouldn't have to do a thing for 11 months of the year, just wait for E3 and get paid to do it.
BTW, I would love to work at IGN Revolution, you wouldn't have to do a thing for 11 months of the year, just wait for E3 and get paid to do it.
There isn't going to be a "versus". You'll pay for the software in BOTH cases (MPEG2/CSS/Dolby Digital licensing fees). Difference is, with the hardware solution you'll pay both for the software and the chip and its associated physical components, thus making it more costly, plus you'd have to provide a dedicated port for an add-on MPEG2 decoder chip and software to run it, all of which the system doesn't really need in the first place, thus increasing costs even more...NANOTEC said:
Guden Oden said:
We're not talking about fees, we're talking about costs of developing the DVD software. How much do you think the decoding chip costs with the built-in hardwired decoding algorithms? Your assertion that a software only solution will always be cheaper than a hardware solution has no basis in reality. Do you know how much it costs to develop a software decoder from scratch for a nonexisting platform? It's cheaper to simply buy a decoder chip and feeding it standard DVD data from the drive. All DVD drives feed the same data so all decoder chips will work with any DVD drive. With the cost competition between the decoding chip makers and economies of scale you're looking at a coupe dollars. There is no development needed. With software you need all kinds of bug testing especially on an architecture that isn't even complete. With a chip that's already in hundreds of millions of DVD players, you KNOW it works without much testing at all. Remember GC's expansion ports? What you don't think you could hook up a hardwired decoder module through it? You think Revolution will somehow be different? In fact Revolution will have USB 2.0 ports. More than enough for DVD decoding. Do you know of any standalone DVD players that use a software solution running on a general purpose CPU? Why is that?
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How much "development" do you think this DVD software is going to require? Chances are, you get the source code for a decoder when you buy a MPEG2 license. This isn't exactly rocket science you know, DVDs have been around for what, ten fricken years now? Near enough anyway.NANOTEC said:
Who says it has to be developed from scratch?
You have to develop software for your hardware solution as well you know, there won't automagically appear a player interface on the TV screen just by dropping the chip down on the motherboard of the revolution you know.
You take your already licensed decoder source and drop it into the player source at approx the same place where the function call for setting up the hardware decoder would be in a hardware-based solution. I don't see what's so fundamentally different here.So you postulate. I don't think that's an accurate view of reality, considering things I already mention, including adding pins and interfaces for essentially redundant hardware to a motherboard that's bound to be rather cramped for space already.
Your ramblings about how a hardware chip would make all the work finished for nintendo is nothing but that. If you want the decoder to be attached to USB2, you'd have to develop a USB2 to whatever interface the decoder uses bridge chip, and engineer software to run that setup. It's not all done just because you buy a chip for a couple dollars, far from it.
There's a big reason why silicon integration is progressing at the rate it is, and that is because chips and hardware cost money, and if you can cost-reduce a chip away from your product, well, that's money saved right there. So no, there's not going to be a hardware decoder in a little box on the side I wager.
The source code wasn't designed for your hardware and it hasn't been tested on your hardware either. That takes time and money in addition to the cost of the software IP.
It doesn't cost that much to design a simple GUI for the DVD player. Regardless both solutions require a GUI anyway so it's irrelevent.
And somehow Nintendo managed to squeeze three expansion slots underneath the GC. Why is Revolution going to be different?
There are already USB decoders on the market. Nintendo doesn't need to design anything.
Sure it costs money but so does software. What you think Cyberlink is going to sell you their decoding software IP for pennies just because it's on a CDROM? And you'd still have to port it to your console as well as test it. Why do you think MS sold the Xbox DVD remote for $20 when you could just as easily buy a standalone DVD player with remote for $25? I assure you Nintendo willl be making a nice profit on this attachment that allows DVD playback. It might actualy be something like the Play-Yan adapter or GB player for GC.
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Well, assuming Nintendo actually wants people to develop software for Rev then chances are that there is, at least, a C/C++ compiler for the system - in which case they could simply recompile/rework an existing MPEG2 decoder.NANOTEC said:
Do you think an ASIC vendor is going to sell you his (hardwired) algorithms for cheap? Why should he charge any less for his "software," burned onto a chip, than the man that's selling the pure software solution? If anything, his development costs (per product) are an order of magnitude or more higher than the SW developer.
Also, companies such as Nintendo who purchase in lots of 10000 or more are subject to different pricing schedules than you or me. I'm fairly certain they could buy a DVD decoder license for less than $20 (or whatever PowerDVD costs now) per unit.
One final note: A software product need be developed only once, and then can be replicated virtually for free across an arbitrary number of units. On the other hard, the cost of additional hardware will increase linearly with respect to the number of devices sold.
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