ESS Technology Announces AAC Feature for Vibratto-Based DVD Players
New Feature Enables High-Quality MPEG-2 Audio Coding at Low Bit Rates
FREMONT, Calif., June 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ESS Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: ESST - News), a leading provider of silicon solutions for digital video, digital home entertainment systems, and home networking solutions announced today the integration of MPEG Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) technology in the Vibratto(TM) DVD chip family.
AAC is an audio compression technology that is part of the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 standard specifications. This technology was developed by AT&T, Dolby Laboratories, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, and Sony Corporation. AAC provides up to 48 channels of high-quality audio, at samples rates of up to 96 kHz. Broadcast quality 5.1 channel audio programs can be transmitted at 320 kbps. Most importantly, AAC offers significantly higher music fidelity than MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3) audio, yet generates files that are approximately 30 percent smaller.
AAC's high-quality audio coding technology is a possible successor to MP3 audio compression and as such, may become the preferred music distribution format for many broadcast and consumer electronic applications. In fact, AAC has already been widely adopted in the United States and around the world for music downloading, Internet streaming, TV broadcasting, and audio archiving.
Andrew Fischer, Dolby's Business Development Manager for AAC stated, "Next year's hot products will be new DVD players with hard disk drives capable of storing users' personal music collections. AAC's superior sound quality and compression efficiency are ideally suited to this application, and we are very pleased to see ESS integrating AAC into its video product line and encouraging product developers to create these exciting next-generation products."
Patrick Ang, executive vice president and chief operating officer at ESS Technology stated, "ESS is very pleased to be the first in the industry to offer DVD chips with AAC audio capability. ACC technology is already being used in a variety of consumer products, including portable music players and home stereos. By incorporating ACC's superior audio compression technology into ESS Technology's Vibratto family of DVD products, consumers will be able to store more music on a similar sized hard drive than ever before possible, and be able to play that music back through the speakers in a home theater or component stereo system. Once again, ESS has shown its market leadership by introducing new features and technology to DVD players."
About ESS Technology
ESS Technology, Inc., is a leading supplier of high-performance feature-packed chips for the rapidly expanding DVD and digital entertainment markets. ESS provides advanced products that enable the emergence of digital home entertainment systems that deliver and manage entertainment and information in the home.
ESS, headquartered in Fremont, California, has R&D, sales, and technical support offices worldwide. ESS Technology's common stock is traded on the Nasdaq under the symbol ESST. ESS Technology's web site address is: esstech.com.
The matters discussed in this news release include certain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, the impact of competitive products and pricing, the timely availability and acceptance of the Company's new products, the dependence on continued growth in demand for consumer multimedia products, and the other risks detailed from time to time in the SEC reports of ESS, including the reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements.
NOTE: Vibratto is a trademark of ESS Technology. All other trademarks are owned by their respective holders and are used in this news release for identification purposes only.
SOURCE: ESS Technology, Inc. |
