ALL: An LSI link to Next Level:
This is in regards to an encoder chip so it is not a direct relation to the set top box, but it does point out that LSI has worked with Next Level before. Hope Next Level was impressed!! :-)
LSI Logic Wins Emmy Award for Motion Estimation Technology
Chip enables broadcasters to preserve high image motion and quality throughout digital manipulation and transmission of TV images.
New York, NY, October 7, 1997 .. LSI Logic Corporation (NYSE: LSI) this evening received a coveted Emmy Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for developing a real-time motion estimation encoder for General Instruments Corporation, now called Next Level Systems Corporation (NYSE: NEXTLEV). This LSI Logic chip performs billions of operations per second to compress, rearrange, search and match digital video data to the human eye, so that the end result will look exactly like the original analog program source.
"LSI Logic is extremely appreciative to the Television Academy for this award and especially grateful to Next Level Systems/General Instruments," said Wilf Corrigan, Chairman and CEO of LSI Logic."LSI has continuously invested in state-of-the-art multimedia technology for our industry leading customers like Next Level Systems. We are leveraging our award winning technology experience to address the emerging high volume consumer markets which require encoding technology."
"I would like to thank the engineers who formed the original development team for this project in 1993. Their multi-year efforts to develop this technology will allow LSI Logic to extend our consumer products leadership," said Amnon Fisher, vice president of the Consumer Products Division of LSI Logic. "This encoder technology, combined with our MPEG-2 capabilities, will be used to develop cost effective encoder products for the burgeoning DVD record/play, internet authoring, and video conferencing markets.
Since the development of this technology, LSI has been working to take this MPEG encoding technology from the professional arena, into the consumer's home. What has been technology for large, expensive, professional broadcast systems, is becoming an affordable MPEG "system-on-a-chip" for a wide range of consumer applications," Mr. Fisher added.
Accepting the award for LSI Logic, Issac E. van Kempen, director DVD products commented, "Real-time motion estimation works by scanning the televised analog images to look for motion matches and to generate digital motion vectors that define motion from one image to another. Scanning involves billions of operations per second making motion estimation the most computing intensive part of the encoding and transmission process. The resulting digital output preserves the broadcast quality of the images through the digital transmission process, while reducing the transmission and storage requirements to a fraction of their original size".
"Our Research and Advanced Architecture groups have reduced this technology into a core and added it to LSI Logic's CoreWarer design library where it can be re-used in many other applications. By combining this with other CoreWare library modules, LSI Logic is building tomorrow's consumer MPEG system-on-a-chip, today. Consumer-priced video encoding is the key that really opens the door to a myriad of exciting possibilities, such as recordable DVD, home video-conferencing, video capturing, and telephony. This device will allow everyone to manipulate high-quality video as easily as we now manipulate text, sound, and graphics," concluded Mr. Fisher.. |
