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Technology Stocks : ATI Technologies in 1997 (T.ATY) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rampant who wrote (4755)	12/14/1999 3:55:00 PM
From: Marc	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5927

ATI Demonstrates Set-Top-Wonder(TM) design for the next generation of cable set-top boxes ATI joins TI at the Western Cable Show in enabling enhanced television and Internet services TORONTO, Dec. 14 /CNW/ - Highlighting the next-generation of cable set-top boxes, ATI Technologies Inc. (TSE:ATY, NASDAQ:ATYT), the world's largest manufacturer of graphics chips and boards, will demonstrate its set-top box at the cable industry's Western Cable Show in Los Angeles. The Set-top-Wonder(TM), jointly developed with DSP market leader Texas Instruments (TI), integrates TI's low-cost PCI-based DOCSIS cable modem and ATI's set-top reference design. The Set-top-Wonder will be available at CableNET(TM) '99 December 15-17. The Set-top-Wonder will enable all the benefits of high-speed data over HFC (hybrid fiber coaxial) to the end user, while minimizing equipment costs for cable modem vendors and installation costs for multiple system operators (MSO). ``The Set-top-Wonder is a highly interactive reference design that requires uncompromising performance from the front-end components,' said Daniel Eiref, ATI's director of set-top box marketing. ``We searched the world for the very best cable modem technology to use in our reference design and we are partnering with TI because of their leadership technology. ATI graphics & video chips and TI cable modems each represent best-in-class products.' ``The combination of TI and ATI silicon will dramatically enhance the television experience provided by the next-generation of set-top boxes,' notes Eric Dewannain, general manager, TI's Cable Broadband Communications group. ``Set-top-Wonder combined with our low-cost cable modem will usher in a new era of cable-ready TV's and PC's with the ability to deliver fast Internet access, IP telephony and video conferencing capabilities.' The ATI Set-top-Wonder provides a platform from which consumer electronics original end-equipment manufacturers (OEM) can develop low-cost, set-top boxes. This reference design incorporates ATI's RAGE(TM) graphics chips for 2D and 3D graphics, MPEG-2 decoding, and video decode and encode. Also included in the reference design are a high performance MIPS CPU, a 10GB hard disk for video and internet storage, and the Microsoft Windows CE operating system. The reference design also provides standard I/O busses such as USB, EIDE, serial, parallel, IR, and others. ATI's RAGE components easily provide the world's most powerful set-top graphics subsystem. ATI's graphics chips allow 16 or 32-bit full-color graphics to be displayed at resolutions of up to 1920x1080 and to be alpha blended with video on a per-pixel basis. Video-in-a-window, 3D manipulation of video, and infinite graphics planes allow the utmost flexibility in user interface design. Video quality is ensured through the use of hardware flicker filters, deinterlacing support, line doublers, and advanced multi-tap scalers. The Set-top-Wonder is an ideal platform for OEMs designing a variety of consumer electronics devices including cable, satellite, and terrestrial set-top boxes, digital VCRs, and other devices requiring a high degree of interactivity or graphics/video performance. The Cable Modem software has been retargeted to the Windows CE operating system and has been specially designed to utilize the CPU native to the CEPC (Windows CE over a PC). TI's proof of concept will lead the low-cost revolution by incorporating its advanced digital signal processing technologies into the silicon. Some of the key TI features that will make this application practicable include ultra-fast channel acquisition time, interference rejection and low power consumption.