SlashGear

It might not mean much to the Android smartphone lurking in your pocket (or that you’d like to have there), but MIPS and Sigma Designs have been demonstrating an Android-based set-top box capable of 1080p high-definition video.  The STB prototype is being positioned as “a major milestone toward the creation of a reference platform” for Android-powered home entertainment devices, with the two companies adding support for Sigma’s hardware graphics acceleration and decoding.

They also made enhancements to Android libraries and the MIPS architecture so that the OS could run on a full-sized display at HD resolutions, rather than the more compact handset displays on Android smartphones.  While the specific Sigma SoC (system-on-chip) used for the prototype was not named, it’s possible that it’s their SMP8640-series chip already in use in Blu-ray players, STBs and other video devices.

Meanwhile MIPs also suggest that their enhancements to Android could make it useful for mobile internet devices (MIDs) and digital picture frames too; they’ll be releasing the changes at an unspecified point in the future, as part of their “MIPS32 architecture for Android” project.  There’s still no timescale for Android-based set-top boxes based on the new technology.

[via Linux For Devices]