Found this 3 weeks ago. It says Creative uses Cube, but no review...................................
onlineinc.com
C-Cube Stakes Another Claim: MPEG-2 One Chip Decode/Encode
C-Cube Microsystems, the long-time toiler in the MPEG vineyards has added to its impressive list of contributions to digital video with its DVx digital video architecture as the world's first, real-time, single-chip MPEG-2 codec. C-Cube was an early designer of MPEG-1 chips and decode and encode design references, and while the market for MPEG-1 in the U.S. has fallen short of its potential, the Asian MPEG-1 market, especially in the form of Video CD players, has proved out for chip maker C-Cube. A recent company background states that C-Cube "created the VideoCD market in China." At $320 million in 1996 revenues, C-Cube is certainly selling a lot of something to somebody.
C-Cube is out to create even bigger markets for digital video, and, increasingly, digital video in the form of MPEG-2, the compressed video data format used in DVD-Video. The company sees its latest design strategy of DVx as allowing "MPEG-2 to penetrate future cost- and space-sensitive applications, including recordable DVD, nonlinear editing, digital VCRs, and consumer camcorders," according to Christie L. Cadwell, product marketing manager for the DVx line, during a recent meeting with EMedia Professional. DVx architecture is scalable and extensible, and operates at bandwidths up to 50Mbps, at main level, simple, main, and 4:2:2 professional profiles, capabilities that should make the chip suitable not just for broadcast-level applications, but for HDTV as well. Based on a 32-bit embedded RISC CPU, the architecture includes a programmable motion estimation coprocessor and DSP coprocessor that allow 20 billion operations per second; SDRAM is integrated, as are PCI- and video I/O-interfaces. Sampling of the silicon is available, with C-Cube expecting to ship DVx in volume in the fourth quarter of 1997.
C-Cube's product line has grown, and presently includes, in addition to forthcoming DVx products, many MPEG-2, DVD, and MPEG-1 encoders, MPEG-2 and MPEG-1 decoders, and several demultiplexers; these products are found in wide ranges of products, from DVD and Video CD players, to satellite set-top boxes. Many of the DVD-Video MPEG-2 subsystems for PCs, including Diamond Multimedia, NEC, Packard Bell, Creative Labs, Jazz Multimedia, E-4, and Samsung, use C-Cube decoders. With the new architecture and single-chip integration, C-Cube believes that more MPEG-2 products will emerge.
The DVx-based first products, which are expected from OEMs in late 1997, will be directed to the professional broadcast and video post-production markets, in such things as real-time nonlinear editing tools. C-Cube sees the DVx technology as enabling a move in 1998 into "prosumer" video products, including video editors--and toward the end of the decade, video recorders--using DVD-RAM to store real-time encoded MPEG-2. Inexpensive single-chip MPEG-2 acquisition recording and playback, Cadwell argues, will become widespread among consumer electronic devices such as Digital VCR, camcorders, and set-tops playing DVD-Video and decoding digital satellite feeds in 1998 or 1999.
Inexpensive, high-quality MPEG-2 real-time encoders should push a data format consolidation in capture, production, and playback devices, and could make obsolete JPEG and DV-based capture and post-production tools. If DVx's claims of quality MPEG-2 real-time encoding prove out, then C-Cube's vision of data format compatibility across the widest range of video applications, from camcorders and PCs to post-production editing environments and HDTV, should prove irresistible.
(C-Cube Microsystems, 1778 McCarthy Boulevard, Milpitas, CA 95035; 408/944-6300; Fax 408/944-6314; c-cube.com)
--David R. Guenette |
