Toshiba Shows First TV Based on Cell Chip

From PC World: Hoping to set itself apart from other television makers, Toshiba will soon put on sale in Japan the first television based on the powerful Cell multimedia processor, the same chip that's used in the PlayStation 3. The Cell Regza TV boasts several advanced features including the ability to simultaneously record eight high-definition channels.

The TV represents more than the culmination of four years of research and development. No other company has yet talked about putting such powerful processing inside a TV and Toshiba is betting that the functions enabled by the inclusion of the Cell give it an edge in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

The 55-inch TV will go on sale in Japan in early December and will cost around ¥1 million [m] (US$11,175). Toshiba expects to sell about 1,000 of the TVs per month when it first launches in Japan. It will first arrive in the U.S. sometime in 2010, with a European release set to happen after that, but no other details on international availability were announced.

The Cell chip was developed by Toshiba, IBM and Sony and each chip contains a single Power PC core and eight co-processors. Together the chips make heavy-duty processing of video a breeze. Compared to one of Toshiba's current TVs the Cell Regza has 143 times the arithmetic processing capacity.

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