Encoder IC makers wrangle for consumer slots
By Junko Yoshida
EE Times
(10/07/99, 5:32 p.m. EDT)
MILPITAS, Calif. — Now that cutting-edge consumer equipment has
become the primary theater of operations for chip companies armed with
MPEG and Dolby Digital encoders, the battle for market share is growing
so cutthroat that tags are being slashed even on the newest market entries,
according to some industry observers.
Unlike the conventional market for MPEG-2 audio/video decoding chips,
the emerging MPEG-2 encoding IC market is dominated by the in-house
semiconductor divisions of leading Japanese consumer electronics
manufacturers, led by Sony and Matsushita. C-Cube Microsystems and a
handful of other U.S. chip companies are seeking to leverage their lead in
broadcast encoding to move downstream into the consumer encoding
market.
For audio encoding, prevalent chip solutions include Texas Instruments
Inc.'s C54X audio digital signal processor and Motorola Inc.'s DSP56362.
Dolby Laboratories recently granted Dolby Digital Consumer Encoder
certification to Motorola's chip, making it easier for system designers to
design next-generation DVD recordable products using Dolby Digital's
two-channel encoder technology.
While many in the consumer electronics industry are determined to move to
the MPEG-2 encoding scheme for time-shifting consumer devices, some
companies, such as Zapex Research (Netanya, Israel), disagree. Zapex has
argued that jumping onto MPEG-2 encoding now might not be the wisest
choice for system vendors, especially for PC add-in card companies
looking for the best price/performance solutions for TV tuner cards. Zapex
recently designed an MPEG-1 video encoding chip called the Z1011.
Add-in card vendors "should give serious consideration to MPEG-1
encoding solutions, because the chip is much cheaper, requires less
memory, produces acceptable picture quality and, most of all, gives them a
better margin compared with solutions based on slow-to-emerge MPEG-2
encoders," said John Zornes, director of marketing at Zapex Research.
It is unclear how the recent earthquake in Taiwan will affect the supply of
upcoming MPEG encoding chips, either from C-Cube or Zapex, since both
companies depend for production of their chips on Taiwanese fabs.
Zapex's Zornes, however, noted that he expects the quake's impact on his
company's business to be minimal because its foundry, Winbond
Electronics, is more than a fab partner: The two companies developed the
chip together and are sharing the profits. "We designed the chip at Zapex,
Winbond did the placement and routing, we then did the timing verification
and they are now building the chip. We are real partners in every sense,"
Zornes said.
C-Cube claims its MPEG-2 video encode/decode chip, DVxplore, has
been making deep inroads into the consumer market as a crucial engine for
new classes of digital devices. C-Cube secured a design slot in NEC
Corp.'s GigaStation digital optical video recorder, based on the Japanese
company's proprietary Multimedia Video Disc (MVDisc) format.
Additional notches in the C-Cube gun are ATI Technologies Inc.'s
ATI-Video Wonder add-in-board, designed to turn a PC into a digital
VCR, and JVC's new-generation D-VHS.
The chip vendor also worked with South Korea's Samsung to develop a
DVD-RAM-based recorder that was demonstrated in Seoul this week at
the Korean Electronics Show.
Tim Vehling, director of marketing at C-Cube's PC/Consumer Codec
Division, claimed that among all the MPEG-2 video encoding solutions
available on the market today, "Nobody has been able to match the feature
set of our DVxplore." The Sparc-based, real-time-capable programmable
MPEG-2 video codec can also transcode DV digital video streams to
MPEG-2 video streams on the fly.
Using C-Cube's DVxplore features, both NEC's GigaStation and ATI's
Video Wonder add-in card offer frame-accurate editing features in addition
to time-shifting capabilities. JVC's D-VHS and NEC's optical-storage
solutions also provide an interface to link their systems with a DV-format
digital video camcorder, allowing the transcoding of video streams from the
DV camera to MPEG-2 video streams to extend recording time and
enhance picture quality.
Key silicon components of the DVD recorder prototype Samsung showed
at the Korean Electronics Show were C-Cube's DVxplore MPEG-2
codec, C-Cube's ZiVA-3 DVD playback chip and TI's 54X DSP.
Real-time stream
DVxplore encodes the incoming video stream in MPEG-2; TI's audio DSP
provides audio encoding. DVxplore then performs AV synchronization and
multiplexing, and generates a real-time read/write stream compliant with the
DVD Forum's DVD specification for Video Recording (DVD-VR).
ZiVA-3 is used for DVD audio/video playback and is capable of a wide
array of playback trick modes. It offers Dolby Digital/Pro-Logic audio
decoding, DTS digital output, DVD navigation, content scrambling system
(CSS) and karaoke capabilities.
In turning its DVD player into a DVD recorder, "Samsung's engineers
didn't need to redo any software development, because they already use
the ZiVA chip in their current line of DVD players," said Vehling.
The prototype DVD recorder allocates 8 Mbytes of DRAM to MPEG-2
encoding and 4 Mbytes of DRAM to MPEG-2 decoding. System memory
requirements would range up to 8 Mbytes, according to Vehling.
Zapex's Zornes, meanwhile, said his company's reference design for a
PC-TV tuner for time-shifting applications is fairly straightforward. The
Zapex encoding subsystem consists of the Z1011 MPEG-1 video encoder,
TI's C54X DSP, 2 Mbytes of synchronous DRAM for MPEG-1 encoding,
and a small amount of RAM and ROM for DSP. The card comes with a
USB controller. A TV tuner module, video decoder and audio A/D
converter would need to be added to the tuner card.
The Z1011 is responsible for video encoding, while TI's DSP performs
MPEG-1 audio encoding, A/V synchronization and multiplexing, according
to Zornes. For playback, a PC using P133 is sufficient for real-time
audio/video decoding on the host processor.
'Forward pricing'
It is unclear how much "forward pricing" chip vendors must do with
encoding solutions today, as they vie for big design wins in price-sensitive
consumer products. C-Cube's DVxplore, when it was originally announced
last year, was priced at $75 per unit. Vehling, however, declined to provide
the current price, saying prices vary with volume.
A case in point is ATI's Video Wonder add-in board. Though the board
uses C-Cube's supposedly $75 solution, its suggested retail price,
according to ATI, is only $199.
Zornes said that Zapex's MPEG-1 video encoding chip costs $15 and that
the bill of materials for the full reference design is $50. "Our target is to
enable add-in card vendors to offer a USB TV tuner card with MPEG-1
audio/video encoding at $149 on retail shelves," he said.
Zapex is gearing up to offer a Video CD recorder manufacturing kit, based
on MPEG-1 encoding, for the Chinese market. Through partnerships with
Winbond and Singapore-based Serial Systems, the company hopes to tap
the huge Video CD market by leveraging its MPEG-1 video encoding chip.
"The Video CD in China is not going away. We expect that 20 to 30
percent of the Video CD player market in China will switch to Video CD
recorders," Zornes said.
He estimated a three-year window of opportunity for MPEG-1 encoding
silicon before MPEG-2 video encoding takes over the consumer market.
eetimes.com
Wow!!! A $199 Cube-based encoder board from ATI. |
