Fernando sent the below message to the Neuros list, and its just another reason why an x86 (with a powerful CPU) continues to make sense for the LINK.  Until the world becomes more standards based, as a manufacturer, we'll continue to need to be flexible to keep our customers from having to deal with these headaches.  That means x86 and having enough space CPU cycles to be able to deal with some inefficiencies in the system.

I recently received this message from defectivebydesign.org:

The MPAA is pressuring the FCC for the authority to cripple recording devices so Hollywood could shut off the video outputs on your cable box, DVR, or other recording device when particular movies or shows come on. If granted, people who wanted to watch those movies would have to buy special defective by design devices subservient to remote "Selectable Output Control," and a dangerous precedent would be set for even more control in the future.

Please tell the FCC to keep Hollywood's restrictions out of your living room: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/mpaa-drm-tv
Thanks for taking action!

Its pretty obvious to me that whenver you create "interfaces" of any kind that are open and available to all, innovation and experimentation and even entrepreneurship thrive. When you created a giant sealed off infrastructure of any kind, only the giant verticals that created them can modify them and things just naturally stagnate. It's pretty widely understood that big entities aren't good at innovation, so why would the FCC even consider shutting off an interface like the analog outputs that allow some level of experimentation (such as Neuros and others are doing).

The piracy argument is so weak here its just hard to justify. Its clear that effectively none of the p2p content available has been generated from analog recordings from set-top boxes, etc. Its just a big red herring to justify the fact that they simply want more control. Let's face a simple reality, innovation is mostly bad for entrenched interests, it changes things, and change is undesirable if you are doing well with status quo. And that's fine, I have no problem with doing whats best for your shareholders. But the fact that these folks have the gall to lobby a government entity to fight something that seems obviously a help to innovators is shameless to me. Can anyone dispute that this helps innovation or that innovation is vital to our national interests?

On November 17, JP Saman, perhaps the top VLC maintainer, will be giving a lightning talk at ETechDays and answering questions about VLC on the OSD2. See the lightning talk page for more information.

Of course, you can regularly find jpsaman on the #neuros IRC channel too if you have questions. The DaVinci 6446 is a great little processor and the OSD2 should become a replacement for the OSD1 as the framework issues get resolved. There are lots of products in the market based off the 6446 processor and it will continue to have a place in TI's line for some time to come. There's even support for flash 9 on the chip. So, if you don't need full HD (1080p) support, consider looking into the DaVinci chip and the OSD2 for your applications/projects.

A big thanks to Andrey A. Porodko for submitting a couple recent patches that could get the OSD2 kernel merged with the mainline. For those that don't know what this means, it basically means the OSD2 code would be something that's inherently more current, something that the community would maintain along with the rest of their progress, rather than leaving it behind (as is the case with most traditional embedded devices).

This is an update that's almost impossible to really appreciate if you haven't been a part of Neuros for a while. After years of teeth gnashing about the read only file system and and lack a package manager fully implemented, a new community member bmc has released software that solves these issues called OSDng.

More good news from TI. From the open platforms principal architect:

"TI is continuing to make our devices more and more open. In addition to the low-cost C64x+ DSP tools, open source DSP Link, and open source Codec Engine, plus configuration tool, the DM6446 VICP is now usable by everyone via the VICP Signal Processing Library

The VICP is a collection of loosely coupled accelerators attached to the C64x+ DSP within the DM6446. The VICP signal processing library provides a simple way of programming these accelerators to provide additional DSP performance within your system. "

If you are wondering why this is big news, its because these tools allow outside developers unprecedented access to the power of TI's DSP, essentially unlocking the power of a chip that's has a price performance ratio that few others can match. The Davinci 6446 chip is about the size of a dime, can do real time high definition video encoding, has such low power consumption it can operate without even a heat sink and using battery power. These chips essentially are bringing laptop type performance to handhelds (or silent set-top devices). For more information, see my youtube intro of the OSD2 dev kit.

For discussion, see the mailing list thread and TI's community site

Following up on the successful Introduction to Crowd Narration and Crowd Narration of the First US Presidential Debate, tonight Neuros will host crowd narration for the First US Vice-Presidential Debate tonight, 17:00 Eastern/16:00 Central.

To actually watch the chat text superimposed on the video, you'll need an OSD but all you'll need to participate is a web browser (and access to the debate broadcast)

To participate on the web: go to narration.neuros.tv where you'll find a familiar chat window, where the input from that window will be directly superimposed on those watching through their OSDs (per the instructions below)

Instructions for OSD owners below the break

You may recall we posted about Crowd Narration previously. That's the technology that allows two lines of chat commentary to be superimposed over whatever show or televised event you are watching. Now we're putting that technology to use with the inaugural event on the first US presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain.

To actually watch the chat text superimposed on the video, you'll need an OSD but all you'll need to participate is a web browser (and access to the debate broadcast)

To participate on the web: go to narration.neuros.tv where you'll find a familiar chat window, where the input from that window will be directly superimposed on those watching through their OSDs (per the instructions below)

If you're like me, you went into this election year with high hopes about the level of debate we'd see in this campaign, and I think we've all been disappointed as the debate has degenerated into the usual sound bites and attack ads. Perhaps with direct citizen participation, we can help to raise the level of the discussion to the level we had originally hoped for. Please come join us as we fact check, debate and discuss in real time right along with the candidates themselves.

Instructions for OSD owners below

Building on the promise of the Neuros OSD, the high definition Neuros OSD 2.0 developer kits, developed in collaboration with Texas Instruments (TI) is now on sale at the Neuros Store . The goal of the OSD2 is to do to the TV what the IBM PC (and the like) did to computers, namely to provide an open set-top device for TV applications. Simply put, without an open computing device, there would have been no PC killer apps. Without an open video recorder, there can be no TV killer apps.

The OSD2 is an open video recorder that's capable of high def video recording from virtually any source and playback in a variety of formats. Using TI's DaVinci DM 6446 chipset, the Neuros OSD 2.0 will offer the first truly open embedded video recording device. “TI's support for this initiative represents a significant milestone, not just for Open Internet Television Platforms, but open electronics generally,” said Mark Denissen, vice president, Worldwide Strategic Marketing, Texas Instruments .

If you're like me, your first reaction to hearing that the web is available on your TV is "why?" The answer is quite a bit different than you might think. The answer is not that you want you want your TV to go out to the web to browse content, which is by and large not the most inspiring concept. The answer is that you want web content brought to your TV. In other words, the Web and all the interactive web 2.0 tools are tools that are well suited to bring rich content to your TV.

Ravenexus Summer of Code project is a great example. Check out this video capture of it in action and you'll quickly understand that the point of the web browser is not "browsing the web" per se, but as a tool that allows all kinds of participation in an integrated TV experience that hasn't existed before. Wiki information populating information about shows and artists is just the beginning. Links to shared favorities, community feedback, etc are all vastly more realistic when the tools to bring them are webtools rather than the typically embedded morass.