The Sony Bravia LCD TVs run Linux

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20090623-sony-bravia

How many of you would like to get an LCD TV for Christmas? A lot, I bet. How many of you know that the Sony Bravia LCD TVs are powered by Linux? A lot fewer, I guess.

LCD TVs have a lot of pixels. When displaying a normal-resolution programme (say from the MBC), the TV must use extremely complex image processing algorithms to generate the missing pixels. For example:

SECAM @ 720 x 576 = 414,720 pixels every 1/25 of a second (I’m simplifying…)
HDTV @ 1920 x 1080 = 2,073,600 pixels every 1/25 of a second

So the TV must digitally create 5 times as many pixels as in the original frame 25 times per second. As you can easily guess, this requires a lot of horsepower hence the use of a powerful computer inside the TV. Sony has chosen Linux to power that computer (specifically Linux kernel 2.6.11)

For the more curious, have a look at http://products.sel.sony.com/opensource/source_tv.shtml

Comments

11 responses to “The Sony Bravia LCD TVs run Linux”

24 June 2009

selven

good to know 😀

those are the types of articles that does show up the world where the opensource community has reached
28 June 2009

Yasir

Even Air Mauritius uses Linux as OS in their planes 🙂 The flight was kinda boring and I thought of watching a movie but when I tried to access the movie’s section using that wired hand-held device, I saw something like:

Error
Rebooting
Loading Linux Kernel 2.something…

didn’t expect open source software on planes 😀
29 June 2009

avinash

In fact, Linux in airplanes (or in the space shuttle for that matter) is relatively common as in a lot of other embedded devices like phones, electronic appliances (Tivo, Linksys WRT54G, Lacie hard disks, McAfee firewalls, etc.)

I guess the main reason is that the Linux kernel is extremely reliable and customisable unlike you know what 🙂
30 June 2009

Yasir

Yep you are right, it’s more stable!! no BSOD and messages like dumping started on win vista etc…since the kernel is open souce, people are more likely to understand how to interface with Microcontrollers like PIC/ATMEL/AVR etc.. Windows Driver Model (WDM) is kind of restricted and writing drivers for devices are required lots of attention..I guess with linux, many programmers are here to help.

regards,
Yasir
29 October 2010

Bariatric Surgery :

LCD TVs are the mainstream stuff that you can buy today but their contrast ratio isn’t that great compard to CRT’s ..
16 November 2010

Lunch Bags

LCD TVs can really save you from high electricity bills and office space ~’*
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9 December 2011

azad

After one year i have to change the screen . poor quality have to be improved
24 August 2024

Kadyaa Brief

Your content is really great, I love it. I’ll definitely visit it again sometime. Thank you.