[Theora-dev] FPGA implementation

[John Kintree]

On Friday 19 November 2004 01:04 am, Andrey Filippov wrote:
> The prices - they all like to put the values for hundreds of thousands
> pieces - Spartan3-1000K gates in small quantities is $73. But who knows -
> maybe having Theora running in the hi-res camera will make it a real
> alternative to current analog security cameras and that will help going to
> much higher volumes.

My track record in marketing is pretty poor.  I have a tendency to grossly
overestimate how many people will be interested in the same things as me.

Right now, what I'm thinking about is a video camera with hardware support
for theora compression that could be USB connected to a laptop computer, or
could be built into a laptop/handheld computer.  This video camera would be 
used for both videoconferencing and as a camcorder.

Since the camera would be attached, or built into, a laptop/handheld computer, 
the camera would not need storage of its own.

It would be sexy to go for wireless USB to connect an external video camera,
but then the device would need its own power source.  A wired USB connection
could provide power to the video camera.  I would prefer to keep the device
as small, simple, and low-cost as possible.

How small could such a camera be?  What would be the costs per device for the
materials, assembly, production, packaging, sales and support in a quantity
of 100,000?  As long as I am pretending, what would be the costs per device
in a quantity of 1 million?

Could a virtual company develop the specs, work out the costs, take advance
orders online, and manage the entire operation for extremely low-overhead,
thereby keeping the per unit cost as low as possible, and the potential
market as large as possible?
John