PS3 Cell Processor to Power Toshiba TVs

Toshiba is reportedly working on integrating a variant of the Cell Processor (used in the PS3) to power the conversion from standard definition to HD 1080p in some TV sets. You can imagine that the marketing claim is that it will make Standard Definition (SD) look like High Definition (HD) and while it is not true, it is safe to say that a good upscaler can prevent SD from looking very bad (blocky) on a large HDTV.

Toshiba is the company that manufactures the Cell processor (Sony sold the right to Toshiba), but I have to wonder if using Cell is economically sound. For one, a PS3 Cell is capable of scaling more than one HD stream, so it seems overkill – unless Toshiba wants to do a fancy HD picture in picture (PIP). The other explanation would be that Toshiba is using a “Cell-like” processor with less SPEs (computing-cores). That would make more sense.