Matthias Schniedermeyer wrote:
Video is inherently bandwith intensive. At least (for PAL): 720x576x4x25 = about 40MB/s (*) 1920x1080x4x25 = about 200MB/s
And that's taking aside ANY of the other processing. Decoding, IDCT, YUV->RGB transformation and so on. Also taking aside the total bandwith killer, when you have to scale the material.
AFAICT the vector cores COULD(*2) help you with the first parts, but the rest has to be done by the 3(,?)Ghz RISC PPC-CPU and shoveling that much data back and forth may be a bit much, without any acceleration. But on the other side the PS3 systems is supposed to have an impressing memory-bandwith, which could rescue the day.
So unless someone tries there is no way to be sure, but for the time beeing i'm sceptical.
IOW:
- SDTV maybe
- HDTV no way without acceleration
*: x4 isn't a typo. Most systems use 32 bit per color. 24 bit "packed" format isn't used anymore AFAIK.
*2: If you have software that can use the SPUs, but unless someone writes a Decoder-Library with SPU support you can only use the Main-CPU.
Bis denn
Most people AFAICT use vdr for sdtv and while HDTV may or may not be out of the question due to bandwidth sdtv definitely isn't. In fact I have linux on my xbox which has much less bandwidth than even the ps2 and most distros for that have a dvd player.
I am actually looking into a building a working dtv rig for the (original) xbox but am much more limited by the "mere" 60mb (64mb-4mb for the framebuffer) of memory and others have made mythtv clients for it. As someone else pointed out though a PS3 for linux doesn't make much sense unless you already want a PS3. Any applications it runs will, due to the 88mb ram, probably *feel* slower than a 1-2ghz pc with 128mb+ of ram running an quivalent distro even without graphics accelleration.
Btw here is a website that shows what the ps3 linux can access of the ps3's hardware.
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/support/hardware/breakdown/index.php?hw_ca...