Comdex - Compaq, Toshiba Demo Mpact DVD
Jacqueline Emigh
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11/18/97
Newsbytes News Network
(c) Copyright 1997 Newsbytes News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
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LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, U.S.A., 1997 NOV 18 (NB). In an event held last night at the Hard Rock Cafe by Chromatic Research, together with Compaq, Toshiba and other DVD customers, exhausted reporters got a chance to rest their feet at a home entertainment center, and enjoy the technology they had come to cover.
Also at the event, which was attended by Newsbytes, Chromatic announced that Compaq has chosen its Mpact 2 media processor engine for the Compaq PC Theatre 9100.
Compaq has already used Chromatic's Mpact in its home theater, and is now moving up to Mpact 2, said Compaq software engineer Bill Ellis, speaking with Newsbytes in a corner of the room where Compaq was showing the DVD title "The Mask" to journalists and other first-day-of-Comdex attendees.
Ellis told Newsbytes that Mpact boosts the performance of the Compaq home theater's Intel Pentium processor with MMX by offloading digital processing from the CPU (CPU).
With the Mpact 2, the percentage of processing performed by the CPU diminishes to 10 percent, down from 48 to 60 percent for the Mpact 1, according to the engineer. "This is especially helpful for multiprocessing applications," he asserted.
Other capabilities of Mpact 2 include full screen, 30-frame-per-second MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group)-2 video, even during action scenes; six-channel Dolby Digital surround sound audio decoding; Chromabright and Chromadjust technology for realtime control over color, brightness, and contrast; AVSync technology for precise audio-video synchronization; and CSS (Content Scrambling System) for Hollywood movie playback.
Implemented in the Compaq home entertainment center with the use of a PCI add-in card from STB Systems, Inc., Mpact DVD is software upgradable. Companies now readying Mpact PCI add-in cards include Leadtek Research and E4.
Seated at tables and leather couches, or strolling between demo stations, the attendees also got a chance to listen to the Hard Rock's music selections; interact with an actress playing Marilyn Monroe; and view demos by fellow Chromatics partners Toshiba; Micron; LG Semicon; and SGS Thomson.
More information about Mpact is available on the Web at chromatic.com .
Reported by Newsbytes News Network: newsbytes.com .
Press Contact: Cindy Morgan-Olsen, Technology Solutions, 212-696-2000 |
