MediaTek's Pentonic 2000 is World's first TV SoC with H.266 support

[TheLostSwede]

With ever increasing computational needs from TV SoCs, as we're moving towards higher resolutions and refresh rates, MediaTek is getting ready for the next generation of 8K TVs with its new Pentonic 2000 SoC. This is the world's first TV SoC to support the new H.266 video codec standard, which is an evolution of the H.265 intended for 8K content.

The Pentonic 2000 is fabbed using TSMC's N7 node and it's the first commercial TV SoC to be made on this manufacturing process according to MediaTek. The SoC supports 8K resolution content at up to 120 Hz with MEMC (Motion Estimation, Motion Compensation) and has an integrated AI engine to help improve scaling from lower resolutions. MediaTek also claims that the Pentonic 2000 features the "industry's most powerful CPU and GPU" in a smart TV SoC, without giving away any actual details, although it the SoC does support UFS 3.1 storage, which suggests that we're looking at a recent Arm Cortex-A7x based SoC at the very least.




Outside of H.266 support - also known as VVC (Versatile Video Coding) - the Pentonic 2000 will decode AV1 which has become the defacto standard for Netflix and many other streaming services, H.265, VP9, AVS3 and most likely also many older codecs. MediaTek has also added support for WiFi 6E, 5G as an option and obviously HDMI 2.1 to the Pentonic 2000. As you would expect, there's also support for voice control with support for up to four directional microphones, although MediaTek doesn't specify which voice assistants that are supported. Another party trick on offer is 16-screen picture-in-picture support, although this seems more useful for some commercial applications than watching multiple shows at once. Don't expect TV makers to be touting the fact that they're using the Pentonic 2000 in their TV's next year though, as they're likely to call it something else, or not mention it all.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[chodaboy19]

Doesn't Sony use MediaTek for their TV SoCs?

 

[Chomiq]

Doesn't Sony use MediaTek for their TV SoCs?

Yes and that's why they have gimped HDMI 2.1 "support".

 

[TheLostSwede]

Doesn't Sony use MediaTek for their TV SoCs?

Sony tends to do their own chips for their TVs.
This is more for tier two brands.
Keep in mind that MediaTek bought MStar some years ago, who was/is the leader in low-cost TV chips.

 

[Chrispy_]

It's really hard to get excited about H.266 as not much will be encoded in it for a while, and the compression savings only really apply to extremely high resolutions. At 1440p or lower the space savings are unexciting over H.265.

If 8K was a must-have feature, the reactions would be different but most people I know with the (now standard) 4K TV resolution stick to 1080p because either the bandwidth requirements of 4K aren't high enough to be worth it, the 4K encoding is too compressed to be worth it, the 4K option is paywalled for a price premium and not worth it, or the original content itself simply isn't sharp enough or in-focus enough to take advantage of the extra pixels.

Sports, maybe, might be where it's needed but I think 1080p120 is better for most sports than extra resolution as they tend to contain either static images where focus is on the tracking of a tiny ball (eg tennis) or they have very rapid panning/zooming camerawork and framerate is way more important than resolution.

 

[noel_fs]

Sony tends to do their own chips for their TVs.
This is more for tier two brands.
Keep in mind that MediaTek bought MStar some years ago, who was/is the leader in low-cost TV chips.

Sony uses Mediatek, just like LG, Samsung and i believe panasonic.

 

[dyonoctis]

Sony uses Mediatek, just like LG, Samsung and i believe panasonic.

He's not entirely wrong, seems like Sony does use their own thing for some products :
Sony's new BRAVIA TVs pack advanced AI with Cognitive Processor XR - SlashGear

 

[jonup]

He's not entirely wrong, seems like Sony does use their own thing for some products :
Sony's new BRAVIA TVs pack advanced AI with Cognitive Processor XR - SlashGear
View attachment 226253

Are you sure these are not Sony marketing branding. I have an "X1" chip in my a few years old Sony TV but it is a MediaTek Soc when you actually let the software read the SoC ID

 

[noel_fs]

Are you sure these are not Sony marketing branding. I have an "X1" chip in my a few years old Sony TV but it is a MediaTek Soc when you actually let the software read the SoC ID

Its the proprietary algorithm for rescaling/tone-mapping. Again, samsung, lg, panasonic, etc, do the same thing, they all have some kind of "image processor"

 

[dyonoctis]

Its the proprietary algorithm for rescaling/tone-mapping. Again, samsung, lg, panasonic, etc, do the same thing, they all have some kind of "image processor"

are You sure that it's just a software ? They are saying several times that it's hardware . It seems to be similar to what they are doing with their Bionz in their camera. It's an actual chip made by them that execute an algorithm. They might use both at the same time

 

[jonup]

are You sure that it's just a software ? They are saying several times that it's hardware . It seems to be similar to what they are doing with their Bionz in their camera. It's an actual chip made by them that execute an algorithm. They might use both at the same time

In my case it is 100% branding. The TV is advertised as having X1 chip, etc. but to any software that is able to display the SoC informaiont, like CPU-Z, the SoC is MediaTek. It might be a custom design as limited information for the particular SoC was available online. I cannot confirm that is the case with the newer SoC, but mine is not that ancient either. It is running Android TV and in May received a new OS version update. That is full OS version update, not just a minor update. As far as I am aware, Sony does not have SoC design devision, so if they are not using MediaTek anymore, they are definately using one of the other SoC manufacturers.

 

[Chomiq]

Its the proprietary algorithm for rescaling/tone-mapping. Again, samsung, lg, panasonic, etc, do the same thing, they all have some kind of "image processor"

Pretty sure LG isn't using mediatek but their own soc, at least they don't have the same limitations that we see with other brands.
Sony had XR processor and a separate mediatek co-processor, since x900h its all handled by a single mediatek chip.

 

[trsttte]

It's really hard to get excited about H.266 as not much will be encoded in it for a while, and the compression savings only really apply to extremely high resolutions. At 1440p or lower the space savings are unexciting over H.265.

If 8K was a must-have feature, the reactions would be different but most people I know with the (now standard) 4K TV resolution stick to 1080p because either the bandwidth requirements of 4K aren't high enough to be worth it, the 4K encoding is too compressed to be worth it, the 4K option is paywalled for a price premium and not worth it, or the original content itself simply isn't sharp enough or in-focus enough to take advantage of the extra pixels.

Sports, maybe, might be where it's needed but I think 1080p120 is better for most sports than extra resolution as they tend to contain either static images where focus is on the tracking of a tiny ball (eg tennis) or they have very rapid panning/zooming camerawork and framerate is way more important than resolution.

The nvidia shield upscaler probably produces better results than receiving a low bit rate 4k signal anyway.

I found this interesting as I didn't even know H.266 was a thing, and regardless of resultion better compression is usually always good when HW support comes but as everyone moves to AV1 I don't know how much traction H.266 will be able to gain, at least they seem to have learned from the mistakes of H.265 and made it royalty free (at least in some ways)

 

[noel_fs]

Pretty sure LG isn't using mediatek but their own soc, at least they don't have the same limitations that we see with other brands.
Sony had XR processor and a separate mediatek co-processor, since x900h its all handled by a single mediatek chip.

True, seems like at the very least LG isnt using mediatek branded soc

are You sure that it's just a software ? They are saying several times that it's hardware . It seems to be similar to what they are doing with their Bionz in their camera. It's an actual chip made by them that execute an algorithm. They might use both at the same time

Im betting its just hardware accelerated, using the soc's GPU and ISP

 

[zlobby]

Looking for vulnerabilities in MediaTek audio DSP - Check Point Research

Research By: Slava Makkaveev Introduction Taiwan’s MediaTek has been the global smartphone chip leader since Q3 2020. MediaTek Systems on a chip (SoCs) are embedded in approximately 37% of all smartphones and IoT devices in the world, including high-end phones from Xiaomi, Oppo, Realme, Vivo and...

research.checkpoint.com

 

[halo9]

Are you sure these are not Sony marketing branding. I have an "X1" chip in my a few years old Sony TV but it is a MediaTek Soc when you actually let the software read the SoC ID

Yep spot on. This is just Sony marketing doing what they do, selling a TV. Their latest and greatest the A90J oled uses a MediaTek MT5895 (MT9950) soc. Panasonic’s best, the JZ2000 uses a MediaTek MT5816 soc. Even though both tout using their “own chips” in marketing material. Though the chip is only half the story, the software plays a part in controlling things too which is where tweaking comes into play. LG do use their own chip which is why they probably aren’t having as many HDMI 2.1 issues like the mediatek chips are.

 

[Tek-Check]

Sony uses Mediatek, just like LG, Samsung and i believe panasonic.

LG has their own in-house solution. That is why all four HDMI 2.1 ports worked properly from 2019 onwards, whereas other TVs with MediaTek SoC struggled for a few years to implement it properly.