Interesting news.
COMTEX) B: Internet audio players set to be heard
B: Internet audio players set to be heard
Nov. 16, 1999 (Electronic Buyers News - CMP via COMTEX) -- While
things are generally looking up for the handheld-device market, one
especially promising segment is the Internet audio player.
With a boost from the MP3 digital-compression and -decompression
scheme, the worldwide market will grow from a little more than 1
million handheld audio players shipped this year to more than 32
million devices by 2003.
The market leader in the burgeoning audio arena is Diamond Multimedia
Systems Inc., San Jose. The PC-multimedia and Internet-connectivity
device vendor has found a thriving business for its Rio portable MP3
player, a pager-sized device that allows portable playback of digital
music from the Internet.
In September, Diamond Multimedia introduced its latest version, the
Rio 500, which doubles the capacity of its predecessor's built-in
memory to 64 Mbytes and thereby allows users to store up to two hours
of continuous digital music.
The new product also adds a USB port that provides download speeds
five times faster than a typical parallel-port connection. Running off
a single AA battery, the handheld system supplies up to 13 hours of
continuous music.
This promising market has attracted a wide range of suppliers,
including consumer- market heavyweights like Samsung Electronics Co.
Ltd., Seoul, and Lucent Technologies Inc., Berkeley Heights, N.J.
Samsung's Yep brand MP3 player, for example, weighs just 64 oz., runs
for 10 hours on two AA batteries, and adds an FM radio and telephone
directory that can store 500 names.
Lucent plans to bring to market by year's end a portable system that
only plays music that has been compressed using Lucent's Enhanced
Perceptual Audio Coder (Epac). The company is working with Web sites
and records labels to carry Epac-encoded music.
But unresolved content security and copyright protection issues
remain a thorn in the side of the potentially lucrative audio industry.
Earlier this year, vendors rallied behind the Secure Digital Music
Initiative (SDMI), an industrywide effort by software, system, and
semiconductor manufacturers to collaborate on a single specification
for building secure Internet audio devices.
A public promise to "fast-track" the spec in time for the coming
holiday season has helped draw in a large number of participants.
In July the SDMI announced its portable-device specification 1.0,
which called for the implementation in a follow-on second phase of a
screening mechanism that would help PC software filter out pirated
material. The SDMI also announced plans to define a process for testing
products for compliance to the new spec and to develop a reference API
for portable devices.
Both technology and political disputes are making it extremely
unlikely that the end-of-the-year deadline will be met. Copyright and
security are among the sticking points.
While the SDMI has selected digital-watermarking technology from ARIS
Technologies Inc., Cambridge, Mass., for phase one of its
specification, the organization has not been able to develop a
consensus on the screen technical structure-whether the digital
watermark should be 1 bit or 3 bits-that controls the ability to copy a
digital recording. Also at issue is the SDMI Trademark License and
Compliance Agreement.
Without resolution of these points, device manufacturers can launch
products, but they won't be able to place an SDMI logo on them. Perhaps
more important, the unresolved issues will prohibit handheld devices
from being able to download SDMI-protected files from the Internet, and
by doing so may hold up the market.
Meanwhile, the absence of an industry-accepted security specification
along with other uncertainties may have a significant effect on
audio-player designs. System manufacturers have typically built their
players around programmable DSPs and ASICs. For example, Lucent is
using a Texas Instruments Inc. DSP in its system, while Diamond
Multimedia is using an ASIC chipset developed by Micronas Intermetall,
Freiburg, Germany.
But with formats in transition, many handheld audio-player
manufacturers may opt for a more programmable solution based on a
general-purpose processor that will allow them to support changing
security and compression standards as well as different storage
devices, port connections, and display capabilities.
In anticipation of that need, silicon supplier Cirrus Logic Inc.,
Fremont, Calif., recently announced a family of system-on-a-chip
solutions based on the ARM720T processor core from ARM Ltd., Cambridge,
England. Cirrus officials claim the product line is the first to
support multiple Internet audio standards such as MP3 and Microsoft's
Windows Media Audio format.
At clock rates up to 74 MHz, the new devices offer processing power
comparable to a 100-MHz Pentium PC, but take advantage of the low-power
ARM design to meet the stringent power requirements of the
battery-powered handheld market.
Cirrus also adds built-in support for a high-contrast LCD, PC
connectivity, and a flash-memory interface. That will allow designers
to use the single-chip device to replace three to five chips in current
MP3 products, including a fixed-function DSP, an external 8- or 16-bit
microcontroller and PLDs for storage, display, and parallel ports.
-0-
By: John H. Mayer
Copyright 1999 CMP Media Inc. |
