Intel's new DTV software decoder...............................
eet.com
Intel changes horses for software-based DTV decoder
By Junko Yoshida
EE Times
(07/23/99, 11:27 a.m. EDT)
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Intel Corp.'s plan to provide an all-software digital-TV decoder for the personal computer has shifted gears. The company has abandoned the notion of using the All-Format Decoder that it licensed from Hitachi America Ltd. more than a year ago in favor of new software from a number of companies, including Ravisent Technologies Inc. (Malvern, Pa.), resulting in a year's delay in getting the product out the door.
At a time when major TV studios have barely dipped a toe into DTV programming, Intel's delay may not register with consumers. The real deferred expectations lie with PC OEMs, now faced with the hassle of putting off the planned launch of broadcast-ready PCs designed for software-only DTV.
Ravisent, a digital audio and video software developer, is working on software decoders that will run on Intel CPUs and support all 18 digital TV formats specified by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). In addition, it is developing software support for data specifications devised by the Intel-led Advanced Television Enhancement Forum (ATVEF). All are targeted to run on CPUs scheduled for launch in mid-2000, said Ed Piehl, director of marketing at Ravisent.
In outlining Ravisent's road map, Piehl predicted that a full-featured solution won't be available for a year. "We will deliver, no later than mid-2000, both an all-format decoder and data support for ATVEF running on Intel's new CPU to be launched next year," promised Piehl.
As Intel and its partners struggle with software-only solutions, consumers can watch DTV broadcasts on their desktops with the help of a different technology: MPEG-2 decoding ICs designed by companies like TeraLogic Inc., whose Janus is said to be the industry's first single-chip high-definition DTV-PC decoder. Microsoft Corp. and others are hoping that an add-in card built around such a chip and priced at less than $300 can bring analog and digital TV to the PC platform much more quickly than a software scheme.
Under its agreement with Hitachi, Intel was to port the All-Format Decoder (AFD) to its Pentium microprocessor through in-house engineering efforts. The technology was supposed to be used in trials late last year and was to be made available on PCs in 1999. However, "We currently have no engineering team working on the AFD," said Intel's Barbara Lopez, broadband market-development manager.
The AFD was meant to enable PC vendors to decode all 18 ATSC formats on their PC platforms without adding an extra MPEG-2 decoder IC. Intel initially deemed AFD key to ensuring that broadcast-ready PCs will handle every flavor of DTV, regardless of whether signals are transmitted in high or standard definition, or formatted in progressive or interlaced scan.
Lopez said, however, that after closely working on AFD, Intel's engineering team concluded that the processing clout of beefier next-generation CPUs means PCs equipped with them can decode and display all DTV signals in native formats much more quickly than AFD-equipped Pentiums. This course was seen as preferable to further tweaking the AFD technology — which uses an element of subsampling methods for display — on Intel's current generation of CPUs, she said.
Lopez said that Intel has been working with several software houses on such a strategy, including Ravisent.
The Pennsylvania company appears to have established a significant market presence in the past 18 months. Its modular software architecture can remain independent of operating systems and silicon components, said Piehl. Thus, "our software solutions can be easily customized to any given, new system designs," he said.
Ravisent claims that its all-format DTV decoder is based on a highly efficient algorithm. However, when run on Intel's 550-MHz Pentium III today, the solution hogs the entire CPU processing power in decoding and playing back 720-line progressive-scan images, leaving no room for a user interface or any other tasks. And the Pentium III does not offer enough horsepower to decode 1,080-line interlaced streams, said Piehl.
Ravisent's digital solutions — including MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and Dolby Digital — have been designed into portable DVD players to be launched by Sanyo Electric before the end of this year, according to Piehl. Its technology is enabling Yamaha's DVD-based karaoke box, he said. In both cases, Ravisent worked with STMicroelectronics to port its software to STM's DVD chips.
In this way, the company has forged a business deal that nets it royalties on every box that Sanyo and Yamaha sell which contains the STM chip.
The modularity of the Ravisent solution allows consumer electronics companies to move on to a better or smaller chip in the future if they becomes available, while using the same software, Piehl said. "Our future [at Ravisent] is not tied to the success of particular chips."
Ravisent's DVD solution is also broadly accepted in the PC world, used "in seven out of the top 10 PCs incorporating DVD-ROM drives," the company said. Those PC OEMs are Acer, Compaq, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, HP and Packard Bell-NEC. Ravisent maintains relationships with leading chip vendors like Intel and ATI Technologies by porting its digital audio-video software solutions to their silicon. As with its MPEG products, Ravisent has arranged to get per-unit royalties from PC makers on each system they sell with a DVD-ROM drive equipped with Ravisent software.
Ravisent plans to drive its software technologies further into the consumer electronics market, hoping to ignite combo products such as HDTV paired with DVD or with a digital satellite receiver. Once they have designed the core digital audio and video in software onto their system platforms, "consumer electronics companies can specify functions they want and quickly add them, to design a combo product at a lower cost," said Piehl.
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