Thursday January 4, 6:15 am Eastern Time
SOURCE: Texas Instruments Incorporated
Texas Instruments' Internet Audio DSP Shipments Surpass Two Million
Superior Performance and Power Make TI DSPs the Overwhelming Choice For Internet Audio Among Consumer Electronics Manufacturers
DALLAS, Jan. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week, Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE: TXN - news; TI) Internet Audio organization will celebrate a banner year having shipped its two-millionth Internet Audio digital signal processor (DSP) in late November 2000. Featured at TI's Internet Audio booth (#6747) at CES, TI shipped DSPs with mp3 encoding capabilities that will be found in consumer products in early 2001. Over the past year, TI's programmable DSP has become the overwhelming choice among leading consumer electronics manufacturers. Now more than 70 Internet Audio products from leading consumer electronics manufacturers, such as Sony, Thomson Multimedia (RCA), Samsung, JVC, Sanyo, LG Electronics and Toshiba, are based on TI's programmable DSP. (See ti.com for more details).
``This has been a remarkable year for Internet Audio and Texas Instruments,'' said Jorge Kittl, business manager of Internet Audio at Texas Instruments. ``The Napster phenomenon, combined with the greater availability of portable players, quickly brought Internet Audio into the mainstream. In order to satisfy consumer demands for more powerful devices, we developed a new generation of DSPs designed to meet the needs of this market. The result was the introduction of the DA250, which set new standards for processing power, battery life, and programmable support for product features. TI will continue to anticipate the needs of this market and offer manufacturers the most advanced, feature-rich DSPs available.''
``Texas Instruments continues to raise the bar in technology and is well positioned to increase their market share in 2001,'' said Will Strauss, president and analyst at Forward Concepts. ``Their new DSP, the DA250, demonstrates TI's strong commitment to the Internet Audio market and is proof that it is continuing to be aggressive in vertical markets enabled by DSP technology.''
In addition to shipping more DSPs into the Internet Audio industry than any other manufacturer, TI's Internet Audio business had several other significant achievements in 2000, including:
-- TI kicked off the year with the first support for Fraunhofer IIS
encoding in mp3 and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) formats, enabling
manufacturers to create portable audio devices with the ability to
record directly from CD sources onto flash memory without the need for
a PC.
-- Keeping abreast of the rapidly evolving formats for Internet Audio, TI
continuously provided support for all the latest digital music
formats, including mp3, AAC, Windows Media(TM) Audio (WMA), ePAC,
Dolby® Pro Logic®, Dolby® Digital(TM) 5.1, QDesign QDX, ATRAC3
and AudibleReady software speech codec ACELP®.net from VoiceAge, as
well as digital rights management (DRM) technology from InterTrust,
Liquid Audio and Microsoft. Because TI's DSPs can be easily upgraded
through simple software downloads, manufacturers can ensure
compatibility with changing industry formats.
-- TI extended support to a broad range of digital storage media,
including Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick(TM), CompactFlash(TM),
Smart Media(TM) and Multi-Media Card (MMC). TI's chip set also
supports connections to other media, such as CD-ROM, hard disk drive
(HDD), SDRAM, Iomega PocketZip and Data Play.
-- TI introduced its 4th generation Internet Audio DSP -- the DA250 -- in
October. The DA250 incorporates the industry's most advanced power
management technology, enabling up to 70 hours of Internet Audio
playtime on a portable player using two AA batteries, as well as the
most processing power of any DSP on the market. The DA250 has already
received commitments from leading consumer electronics manufacturers
in the Internet Audio industry.
-- TI's DSP leadership was reflected in its selection for more than
70 Internet Audio product design-ins, including products from eight of
the top ten consumer electronics manufacturers, such as RCA, Sony,
Sanyo, Toshiba, Samsung, JVC and LG Electronics. TI's DSPs are being
used in a wide variety of end equipments, such as portable Internet
Audio players, car stereos, personal digital assistants (PDAs), cell
phones and digital home jukeboxes.
-- TI will be celebrating this year's success by kicking off 2001 with a
party at the Las Vegas Hard Rock Cafe featuring performances by Smash
Mouth and TI's own Bandpass.
``The features and capabilities of the DA250 will enable consumer electronics manufacturers to continue developing innovative new products in 2001,'' added Kittl. ``TI is committed to anticipating the needs of this market and will continue offering manufacturers the most advanced, feature-rich DSPs available.'' |
