Choosing the Right System on a Chip (SoC) for Internet TV Devices

Developing Internet TV products and devices, choosing the integrated circuit can mean the difference between profitable products or significant losses. During my interview with Feng Chen from Rockchip Electronics, he explained that the capabilities of system on chip solutions for Internet TV can dramatically vary. The manufacturer needs to balance between cost, performance, and features and there are some important features and capabilities of SOCs that can help to make a device much more marketable. The SOC should be able to decode multiple media formats including MKV, Xvid, H263, AVS, MPEG4, RV, WMV. Hardware based media decoding may be used for some video formats including Google WebM VP8. This allows the processor to focus on applications rather than using much of its processing resources for media decoding. The SOC should provide for real time decoding of high definition video (up to 1080p). It should support the Android (at least 2.3) and Windows operating systems along with 2D and 3D graphics capability.