Future settops that don't record....................
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The Next TV Generation: DVD Set-Tops
Philip De Lancie
EMedia, October 1999
Copyright ¸ Online Inc.
When a broad array of consumer electronics, computing, and content companies came together three years ago around the DVD specification, they hoped that a tightly defined set of variations (DVD "books" A through E) would guard against the fragmentation and confusion that dogged the CD family. But competitive advantage often comes via differentiation, and we've already seen many examples--ranging from Divx (now defunct) to Super Audio CD to a variety of recordable/ rewritable formats--of companies viewing the DVD specification as simply a starting point for their own proprietary products.
In most cases, these new DVD designs reflect at least some effort at partial compatibility, so perhaps the specifications have succeeded in encouraging unity without stifling diversity. But it remains to be seen how the DVD family will accommodate the variety of new arrivals expected over the next couple of years, when many more products that either incorporate or build on aspects of the "official" specifications will come to market.
What follows here is a look at four such systems. All are "set-top boxes," intended to bring extended capabilities to the TV. But the similarities end there. Two of these products are intended as "convergent appliances" for the post-millennial home entertainment center. NUON, developed by VM Labs of Mountain View, California, is a proprietary processor platform developed for licensing for makers of consumer digital video products. The company claims that NUON offers enhanced playback quality and support for greater interactivity and connectivity than offered by the DVD-Video specification alone. Sigma Designs, meanwhile, the Milpitas, California-based vendor of DVD decoder solutions for personal computers, is promoting its STB-2000 "reference design," an open architecture intended to appeal to purveyors of high-end TV-based Internet/video streaming services. The design provides for (but does not require) a DVD drive.
Then there are the games. Sega's Dreamcast console, incorporating a special 1GB CD-based drive, looks to be the last major entry in the set-top gaming market that is not based on DVD. Sony Computer Entertainment announced in March that its next-generation PlayStation would be built around DVD media. Nintendo followed with a similar announcement in May. Neither system is due out until next year. Sony and Nintendo are reluctant to dampen sales of their existing wares, so they are keeping tight control of many details, including issues of compatibility with existing DVD formats. But even if these new devices are limited to playing proprietary gaming software, the announcements mark another milestone for DVD by implicitly acknowledging the capabilities, market appeal, and expected staying power of the underlying technology.
VM LABS' NUON
VM Labs describes NUON as an "embedded technology that enhances the passive elements of digital video products such as DVD players, digital set-tops, and digital satellite receivers, while adding high-performance interactive graphics and audio. Its strengths are in 3D graphics and digital video, but it also has the potential to support many other TV applications, such as Web browsing, email, and video-telephony."
The heart of NUON is a proprietary processor that replaces the MPEG decoder chip currently found in DVD players and other set-top video appliances. The company describes the 128-bit processor as "highly parallel, and capable of processing over 1.5 billion individually programmed instructions per second." For comparison, the company says such performance would be equivalent to a Pentium II operating at between 500MHz and 1,000MHz. But NUON is not optimized for word processing or spreadsheets; its forte is graphics, and it is designed to support what VM Labs describes as "a whole range of totally new graphics effects and algorithms such as voxels, plasma, procedural textures, parametric modeling, particle systems, and even some ray tracing."
NUON-based products will not all necessarily incorporate DVD. "Any digital video product can take advantage of the features offered by NUON," the company says. "Such products include digital satellite receivers, digital cable boxes and digital televisions." But what is particularly interesting about NUON from the DVD standpoint is that the programmability of the processor will support interactivity and connectivity that is currently available, if at all, only by accessing "added value" features on a DVD-ROM drive hooked to a PC. "Our goal is to provide consumers with the same interactive DVD experience on the television that is currently available only on PCs with DVD-ROM drives," says VM Labs' CEO Richard Miller.
Many of the more advanced DVD-Video titles released today play back on PCs within a framework developed by InterActual Technologies of Mountain View, California. PCFriendly provides a shell within which the DVD-Video content plays from the DVD-ROM drive, and the shell also provides support for integration of other content types such as HTML and JavaScript. NUON set-top players will follow this approach, but instead of a PC's CPU, the shell will run on the NUON processor. "In a DVD player," Greg LaBrec, VP of Marketing for VM Labs, explains, "the core of the feature set is a pretty dumb hard-wired MPEG-2 decoder. But NUON is completely programmable." That makes it possible to extend the feature set of DVD-Video by playing DVD-Video material alongside (or from within) other applications running at the same time on the NUON processor.
VM Labs announced in May that InterActual will provide authoring tools that can prepare DVD content for NUON-based players. "If a title developer is already delivering content using PCFriendly," says LaBrec, "moving that to NUON will involve just a single click in a check box."
Other applications running on NUON may be written from scratch or ported from existing platforms. "The appropriate programming environment depends on what you are trying to do," LaBrec says. "If you are trying to do core functions or format firmware, you are going to be writing in assembler. But if you are writing a video game, then C++ or any of the other tools you are used to working with will suit you just fine. We have a full toolset right now of conversion tools which will 'NUON-ize' your output." Flash, Shockwave, HTML, and Java are among the approaches the company is supporting.
While LeBrec expects the added capabilities enabled by NUON to be used for video games, NUON will not be positioned as a game console. "Our graphics technology right now is way beyond the current generation of gaming systems such as PlayStation and Nintendo 64," he says. "But it is not going to compete directly with their next generation systems. We are not designed to be a video game system. We are designed to be a total video entertainment solution for the living room."
The company's marketing strategy is based on the idea that the added bonus of video games and other interactive applications will appeal to casual gamers who are in the market for a DVD player and aren't interested in purchasing a dedicated console. "Incorporated as a standard feature into digital video products such as DVD players," the company says, "NUON will provide interactive capability to families and individuals who may have never thought about buying a video game console. This 'Trojan Horse' model offers the potential of a much larger and more diverse user base."
VM Labs' business plan is to license NUON technology broadly to semiconductor and consumer electronics manufacturers, and to "evangelize and nurture" third-party software applications. The company says the incremental cost to manufacturers of incorporating NUON will be "minimal," because the processor includes all the functions necessary for video and audio decode (including subpicture, closed captioning, navigation, etc.) in a single chip that replaces audio and video decoder ICs.
So far, the most prominent consumer electronics manufacturer to throw any weight behind NUON is Toshiba, one of the prime movers behind DVD itself. Toshiba announced in May that it will "incorporate the NUON feature-set in future digital consumer products in the year 2000," but gave no details on specific products. On the software side, a variety of developers and publishers have announced support for the platform, including Acclaim, Simon & Schuster Interactive, Sunsoft, Capcom Entertainment, and Hasbro Interactive.
SIGMA DESIGNS' STB-2000
Like the NUON processor, the Sigma Designs STB-2000 was not developed for sale directly to consumers. According to the company, the reference design will be sold to OEMs, system integrators, telcos, and ISPs who will offer consumers high-bandwidth Internet and digital video services. Previewed at NAB in April, the design was announced by Sigma in June as being "immediately available" to OEMs. "Pricing to consumers will be set by our OEM customers," says Marshall Goldberg, product marketing manager. "In many cases, these boxes will be given to customers for free, in exchange for signing up for the service."
"Consumers and ISPs both realize that single-purpose set-top boxes, which are merely digital TV tuners or Web-browsers, are old technology," says William K. Wong, Sigma Designs' VP of marketing. "They are looking for greater convergence of these technologies. STB-2000 combines all of the latest TV set-top technologies into a single, inexpensive box which consumers can plug into their TV for Web-surfing, email, video-on-demand, DVD playback, and more." The design allows for easy customization with a wide variety of network interface cards (NICs) and receiver cards.
While STB-2000 supports the integration of DVD, it is not specifically intended to enhance the DVD-Video experience. "STB-2000 supports every feature that a standard DVD player offers," Goldberg says. He adds that "with some STB-2000 models, it will be possible to run the interactive portions of today's DVD titles." Since the CPU is "x86-based" and the software is "based on Windows," an STB-2000 box could presumably be designed to allow playback of materials intended for delivery on PC-hosted DVD-ROM drives.
The graphics subsystem in the STB-2000 design calls for a REALmagic EM 8220 MPEG-2/DVD decoder chip on the motherboard, interfaced directly to an IGST CyberPro5050 streaming media processor from IGS Technologies of Santa Clara, California. Sigma says the CyberPro5050's ability to maintain sharpness while blending video, text, and graphics is "critical for enabling Web-browsing on standard TVs, which offer much lower resolution than computer monitors."
Regarding compatibility with various DVD and CD standards, Goldberg says that "the STB-2000 uses IDE DVD drives, which are far superior than the mechanisms used in most consumer players. So you can expect that not only will all DVD-Video titles work, but you can use CD, CD-R, DVD-R and DVD-RAM discs in the machine. Today's 5X and 6X DVD-ROM drives deliver much better performance for fast playback, too." Goldberg adds that "an STB-2000 could be configured with a DVD-RAM drive for video recording, but with 'Infinite Digital VCR' we don't think that this will be offered by our OEMs."
The "infinite digital VCR" that Goldberg refers to is actually a video-on-demand scheme using STB-2000 as a client of Oracle Video Server. This functionality is, in fact, much more the core focus of STB-2000 than DVD. Sigma says that "executives at several potential OEMs have said that an inexpensive, disc-less set-top box equipped with REALmagic will be an excellent way for companies and individuals to display true time-shifted video-on-demand over a switched network."
"The server can store every TV show on every channel," Goldberg explains, "holding everything that's been on TV for the last week or month. So when you come home from work, you can watch whatever you want: the Seinfeld episode that aired two days ago, the Oprah show from this afternoon, whatever. And you can stop, pause, or fast forward to whichever parts you want." Until every movie available on video is available from a server, however, DVD will likely remain important in enhancing the STB-2000's appeal to consumers, and furthering the goal of a single-box set-top solution.
SONY'S NEXT-GENERATION PLAYSTATION
First introduced in Japan in 1994, the original Sony PlayStation has by now shipped over 50 million units worldwide. But Sony Computer Entertainment describes its goals for what we'll refer to here as PlayStation2 (the official name has yet to be announced) in less commercial terms. In a March product announcement, the company said it wants to "create a new form of entertainment beyond games via the integration of computing and digital AV technology."
At the center of this effort is a 150MHz "Graphics Synthesizer" and a 300MHz "Emotion Engine" CPU, which was developed jointly by Sony and Toshiba. The CPU's name reflects Sony's concept of "emotion synthesis," defined as the ability to create characters whose looks and behavior are believable, and who are capable of displaying a range of emotions. Beneath the jargon is a processor built with 0.18-micron semiconductor technology and 128-bit data bus, cache memory, and registers. Sony rates the Emotion Engine's memory bus bandwidth at 3.2GB/sec, and says the processor's peak calculation performance reaches 66 million polygons per second, "comparable to that of high-end graphics workstations used in motion picture production."
According to Sony, the Emotion Engine's power will allow a new approach to game design. "Today," says Molly Smith, director of public relations at Sony Computer Entertainment America in Foster City, California, "the content that goes into a PlayStation game--2D bitmaps, 3D polygons, sound samples, video clips, motion-captured animations--is largely pre-generated off-line by an artist or musician and played back inside the box. The new PlayStation has the power to run complex algorithms that will procedurally generate graphics and animations. We can now perform the mathematics in real-time, handling such complex dynamic and physical simulations as fog, water, and fire, or what happens when a handful of marbles are thrown downstairs."
The Emotion Engine includes built-in MPEG-2 decoder circuitry, and the sound chip in PlayStation2 includes support for "processing of advanced 3D digital sound techniques such as AC-3 and DTS." The machine also includes a DVD-ROM drive. But despite these "DVD-ready" ingredients, Sony won't say whether PlayStation2 will support standard DVD-Video playback, or playback of any CD formats other than current PlayStation CD games. The existing games will be "100 percent backwards-compatible" courtesy of an I/O Processor, co-developed with LSI Logic, that also supports IEEE 1394 (FireWire) and Universal Serial Bus (USB) connectivity.
PlayStation2 is planned for release into the Japanese market by March 2000, with overseas introduction planned to follow in the fall of that year. The company won't divulge specifics on pricing, saying only that the machine will "debut at a very market-friendly price point." Software plans are described in similarly vague terms: "It is important to launch the next-generation PlayStation with a wide range of compelling software titles." But the company is currently working on in-house content development, and says it has been courting software developers and content providers since March.
"We are committed to supporting our development community," says Smith, "and we are offering licensed developers an extensive software development kit. We have also created a program that offers them a large variety of options for middleware, the code that sits between the hardware and the developer's own application. The middleware is linked to a tool system that runs on a workstation or PC with an accompanying SDK. It will allow developers to spend their resources on creative innovation rather than technical invention, and also allow games containing more advanced technology than individual developers could create on their own."
NINTENDO'S NEWEST
Not to be outdone by rival Sony, Nintendo announced its forthcoming follow-on to Nintendo 64 in May. Initially dubbed "Dolphin," but now referred to by the company as simply as "our next system," the machine is slated to launch worldwide by the end of 2000.
The Nintendo effort involves the participation of three key partners: IBM, Matsushita, and ArtX, Inc. of Palo Alto, California. Graphics for the new box will be handled by a custom 200MHz chip designed by ArtX, while the machine will be powered by "Gekko," a 400MHz variant of IBM's Power PC CPU that uses IBM's 0.18-micron copper technology.
Piggybacking on Power PC rather than developing a proprietary CPU from scratch should help keep Nintendo on schedule and hold down costs for the finished machine. Nintendo of America chairman Howard Lincoln said in a May press conference that the system "will retail at a mass market price for home video game systems," which is as far as the company will go in discussing pricing.
Forsaking ROM cartridges for DVD with the new system, Nintendo won't be trying for backwards compatibility with Nintendo 64 games. As for compatibility with existing DVD and CD formats, the company has yet to clarify its intentions officially. But its pairing with Matsushita offers strong indications that DVD-Video playback will be included. The companies announced in May that they had "agreed to a comprehensive collaboration in the area of digitally networked home electronics."
One element of the pact is that the two companies will "collaborate on convergence products that incorporate next-generation game machine and digital audio-video technologies." In case that hint wasn't clear enough, Lincoln said the Nintendo technology will be "integrated into various Matsushita or Panasonic-branded DVD consumer electronic products, enabling consumers to play movies and music as well as games published by Nintendo and Nintendo's third party publishers." Support for DVD-Video playback would fit well with Nintendo's intention to market the system broadly, with a target market described by spokeswoman Eileen Tanner as "gamers from eight to 28."
Another aspect of the relationship is that Matsushita will develop and supply the DVD media and drive devices for Nintendo's new machine, which are claimed to incorporate "unique" but unspecified anti-piracy technology yielding "enhanced counterfeit protection."
A third element commits the companies to pursuing "future applications of digital network-related products and services." That suggests that the new machines might ship with a modem, particularly because competitor Sega has already announced that Dreamcast, which ships in September 1999 for $199, will include a 56kbps modem in the box.
Sega may have given up significant technical advantages in sticking with a CD-based system rather than moving to DVD like Nintendo and Sony. But by the time the other systems hit the market, Dreamcast's attractively priced, network-enabled machines will have had a year to win fans and build a library of titles. Whether that head start turns out to be more important than leaping forward into DVD technology, only time can tell.
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Companies Mentioned in This Article
Nintendo of America Inc.
4820 150th Avenue Northeast, Redmond, WA 98052; 800/255-3700; nintendo.com
Sigma Designs, Inc.
355 Fairview Way, Milpitas, CA 95035-3024; 408/262-9003; Fax 408/957-9740; sigmadesigns.com
Sony Computer Entertainment America
919 East Hillsdale Boulevard, 2nd Floor, Foster City CA, 94404; 800/345-7669; playstation.com
VM Labs, Inc.
520 San Antonio Road, Mountain View, CA 94040; 650/917-8050; Fax 650/917-8052; vmlabs.com
Philip De Lancie (pdel@compuserve.com) is a freelance writer covering media production and distribution technology based in Berkeley, California. |
