Roku Streaming Stick Brings Smarts To MHL Equipped TVs

Smart TVs will be a big deal this year. If you sunk your money on one of last year's 3D sets, you probably don't want to do it again for a Smart TV. Not to worry, Roku has you covered. Introducing the Roku Streaming Stick, an over-the-top streaming solution squeezed into something the size of a USB drive. The device will bring the full Roku experience, including all 400 channels including Netflix, and Amazon Instant Videos; wirelessly and without any cables. 

The device is powered and delivers content through the Mobile High Definition Link (MHL) standard. The HDCP-compliant standard was established in 2010 and provides up to 1080p video, 7.1 channels of 192 kbps digital audio over a 5-pin interface that also provides 500 mA of 5 volt power. The 5-pin interface can be configured into various connectors, and can currently be found in a handful of devices from Samsung, though the consortium that formed the standard includes the likes of Sony, Toshiba and Nokia. That half amp of power is enough to power the BCM2835 that can be found in the Roku 2 line-up, so this could really be a case of efficient packaging. 

So, if Smart TVs will be big this year why not a Roku TV? Roku sees an issue with integrating the hardware platform directly into the television: upgrades. The hardware behind each successive generation of hardware streaming devices is a pretty big improvement over the last. So frequent platform changes drive thie software innovations we'll come to expect from a Smart TV market. Yet most consumers replace their TVs only every five years or so. Roku's solution is to provide a low cost, OTT, Smart TV platform that can be replaced when updated hardware is available. We'll be excited to see how well it performs in person at CES.

Gallery: Roku Streaming Stick Brings Smarts To MHL Equipped TVs

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Cotton Candy: Funny Name, Dual-core Android on a USB Stick

Occasionally a product presents itself that seems to be so logical you're left stunned that no one thought of this before. So it is with the Cotton Candy, the codename of what's described as an "any screen, connected computing USB device" from newcomer FXI Technologies. The premise is simple; take the processing guts from a current smartphone (say the Samsung Galaxy S II) and fit them neatly in a USB stick shaped device. With USB on one side for connectivity and power, HDMI on the opposite side and you have an Android device that can be plugged in just about anywhere.

We've taken a look at some "headless" ARM devices in the past, but these modeled themselves after slim PC's, this device tries to take ful advantage of the unique possibilities that exist from using smartphone innards. And while FXI could have made it to market faster using lesser internals, they are opting to use a SoC that closely mirrors the Exynos 4210, with a 1.2 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 design, and the impressive ARM Mali-400 GPU. Capable of outputting 1080p from its HDMI port, and equipped with Bluetooth and WiFi this "companion device" could do decent duty as a media player/streamer, gaming device and writing platform. FXI doesn't expect the device to connect to TV's only, virtualization software enables the device to stream its frame buffer to and accept inputs from any PC or tablet, giving users versatility to have a continuous client in the shape of a USB stick. As with most new technologies, the cloud is everpresent and all-important, though a microSD slot lends the Cotton Candy up to 32 GB of storage. 

Anand has been talking for a long time about just enough computing, and with mobile computing progressing at a faster than Moore's law pace it was only a matter of time for the two to meet and new and interesting products to take shape. The devil's in the details though, and in this case the mystery is what will the Android experience really be like on the big screen, or VM'd on a PC. We won't know for certain for sometime, too. Earliest release is expected to be during the 2012 holiday season, the pricing is expected to be below the $200 mark. Color us intrigued. 

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Computex 2011: SuperTalent Introduces SandForce Powered USB3 Stick

The very first enthusiast SSDs had their roots in USB drives. Memory vendors that were making USB sticks thought to put a bunch of NAND in parallel behind a rudimentary NAND to SATA controller and you had an SSD. Performance characteristics looked great on paper but of course there were teething problems.

These days the reverse has happened. High end USB sticks now look a lot like small SSDs. USB 3.0 SSDs were either too bulky to carry around or weren't that impressive from a performance standpoint, but SuperTalent just showed me one that is quite tempting. This is the SuperTalent USB 3.0 Express RC8, it's a USB stick that has a SF-1222 controller just like the previous generation of high end SSDs:

With four NAND devices on board, the RC8 actually has 8-channels feeding two die per package. Two channels are routed to each device, hence the use of BGA NAND vs. TSOP. SuperTalent uses 25nm IMFT NAND for the drive.  Performance as a result is quite impressive. Over USB 2.0 you're looking at a maximum of around 40MB/s, but over USB 3.0 you can hit 200MB/s with highly compressible data:

Worst case performance for incompressible sequential writes over USB 3.0 is still only 32MB/s thanks to the one-die-per-channel architecture (as well as inherent SF limitations). Read speed is still excellent however at nearly 180MB/s.

The performance characteristics make this drive less ideal for copying large compressed videos to, but great for general use. In fact, running/installing applications or even running a full OS environment from the drive is likely a pretty good experience. SuperTalent will offer the RC8 in 25GB, 50GB and 100GB capacities (with 32GB, 64GB and 128GB of NAND on board).  Expect availability starting late this month and pricing to be inline with standard SF-1222 based SSDs (~$110 for the 50GB drive). {gallery 1130}]]>

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