The Cell is the microchip that powers the Sony PlayStation 3, and it's a unique and very powerful processor that's responsible for the PS3's impressive graphics capabilities.
Now the chip is finding a home inside a television, courtesy of Toshiba, which showed off its slate of upcoming Cell-powered TVs at CES 2010.
The setup is complicated, to say the least: The Cell resides not in the panel itself but in a set-top box separate from the TV set. The box then connects wirelessly to the television. The breakout box also includes a DVR and other media server features, including a terabyte hard disk, internet video connectivity, and a host of connections to services like Netflix and Pandora. It's even got a DVD player built in.
Why drop a Cell in here? According to a story in TWICE, the Cell chip is 143 times faster than the processors in the typical LCD TV, which means viewers can expect to see a better, crisper picture no matter where the image is coming from. It can also adjust brightness levels dynamically in 512 different zones on the screen, will adjust color temperature to match room lighting, and can convert any 2D content to 3D in real time, without additional equipment (except, of course, for standard 3D goggles).
There was no immediate word on pricing. Availability is set only for "later this year."
Toshiba has been a huge, if inexplicable, fan of the Cell chip for years. Most recently it experimented with putting a Cell processor in a laptop. That plan ultimately didn't pan out, though, and Toshiba killed the Cell-powered line after about a year.
I saw several of Toshiba's Cell TVs in person at CES and wholly agree that they look great... but are they 143 times better than your typical LCD TV? Not hardly, but as content sources improve in resolution and features (the 3D angle could be a biggie), perhaps we'll see the Cell difference in action.
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