Intel, ST To Use Focus’ TV-Out Chip
By Alex Romanelli, Electronic News Online -- 11/1/01
Electronic News
Campbell, Calif.-based Focus Enhancements Inc. has developed two video encoder chips that convert computer graphics for TV display without producing any artifacts or loss in image quality. Focus today said Intel Corp. has endorsed the technology with plans to incorporate software drivers for one of the chips in its 830G and 830MG chipsets, code-named Almador, for notebook computers.
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel (nasdaq: INTC) helped pay for the development of Focus’ (nasdaq: FCSE) FS450 TV-out chip and has done complete WHQL verification of the drivers for Microsoft Corp.’s Win95, Win98, WinNT, Win2000, WinMe, and WinXP operating systems. Focus said Intel plans to include a port for the FS450 on its Almador chipset for Celeron and Pentium III designs.
The technology behind the 450 chip, dubbed TV-out, allows notebook computer displays, including small type, Asian fonts and complicated graphics, to be perfectly displayed on a TV screen. Focus claims to be the only company capable of performing this transformation of image data without producing missing lines, artifacts, distortion or broken graphics.
"Almador is going to be the first time people see the breadth of it (the technology)," said Brett Moyer, Focus’ executive vice president. "The Almador chip as a processor reduces the board space, the weight, the heat and the loss for value priced notebooks. TV-out in the notebook environment is used historically by business presenters, but now the larger segment of the business is DVD. Almost all the laptops, especially at this price point, will start moving to incorporate TV-out."
Bill Schillhammer, Focus’ vice president of OEM sales, said a year ago only 3 percent to 5 percent of laptops had TV-out features. Some Taiwanese manufacturers now intend to make all of their notebooks with DVD-ROM drives fully compatible with TV-out technology, he said.
"We’re the only company using a studio grade decoder," Schillhammer said. "If you don’t have it, the TV image breaks up when you have computer graphics on the display. We’re the only ones using an artifacts-free scaler. If the laptop is running in XGA, which almost all of them are, we scale that XGA from the desktop onto the TV without any artifacts: without any missing lines, broken graphics, or distortion of the image. That is an obvious thing to do, but it turns out it is a very difficult thing to do. Because you are not scaling it in nice simple ratio and numbers. You’re scaling it in weird ratios, it is very difficult to scale from one relatively arbitrary ratio to another."
The viewable area of a TV varies tremendously from manufacturer to manufacturer, and to compensate for this over-scanning is tricky because you never get a fixed ratio, he said. Focus claims to be the only company with an arbitrary ratio scaler that does not introduce artifacts.
A second chip, the FS460, is designed to perform the same functions as the 450 but for multimedia applications, such as set-top boxes (STBs).
"We have a large effort going around the STB environment," Moyer said. "We see going after the graphics card business and notebook business as fundamental to our first level of growth, but we do see the STB market coming into its own, and because of the quality of our products there is both a hardware and chip silicon opportunity as well as a technology licensing opportunities."
Earlier this week, Focus announced a 3D PC graphics accelerator board based the 450 chip and Geneva-based STMicroelectronics’ (nyse: STM) KYRO II graphics chip. This reference design is expected to be available later this quarter.
"It is going to be the very first time the industry will see the highest quality TV-out available at the low end of the market for high end users," Moyer said. "The graphics guys use TV-out for gaming all the time. With STMicroelectronics and the 450 you get GeoForce 2 quality at about half the price."
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Intel, ST To Use Focus’ TV-Out Chip
By Alex Romanelli, Electronic News Online -- 11/1/01
Electronic News
Campbell, Calif.-based Focus Enhancements Inc. has developed two video encoder chips that convert computer graphics for TV display without producing any artifacts or loss in image quality. Focus today said Intel Corp. has endorsed the technology with plans to incorporate software drivers for one of the chips in its 830G and 830MG chipsets, code-named Almador, for notebook computers.
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel (nasdaq: INTC) helped pay for the development of Focus’ (nasdaq: FCSE) FS450 TV-out chip and has done complete WHQL verification of the drivers for Microsoft Corp.’s Win95, Win98, WinNT, Win2000, WinMe, and WinXP operating systems. Focus said Intel plans to include a port for the FS450 on its Almador chipset for Celeron and Pentium III designs.
The technology behind the 450 chip, dubbed TV-out, allows notebook computer displays, including small type, Asian fonts and complicated graphics, to be perfectly displayed on a TV screen. Focus claims to be the only company capable of performing this transformation of image data without producing missing lines, artifacts, distortion or broken graphics.
"Almador is going to be the first time people see the breadth of it (the technology)," said Brett Moyer, Focus’ executive vice president. "The Almador chip as a processor reduces the board space, the weight, the heat and the loss for value priced notebooks. TV-out in the notebook environment is used historically by business presenters, but now the larger segment of the business is DVD. Almost all the laptops, especially at this price point, will start moving to incorporate TV-out."
Bill Schillhammer, Focus’ vice president of OEM sales, said a year ago only 3 percent to 5 percent of laptops had TV-out features. Some Taiwanese manufacturers now intend to make all of their notebooks with DVD-ROM drives fully compatible with TV-out technology, he said.
"We’re the only company using a studio grade decoder," Schillhammer said. "If you don’t have it, the TV image breaks up when you have computer graphics on the display. We’re the only ones using an artifacts-free scaler. If the laptop is running in XGA, which almost all of them are, we scale that XGA from the desktop onto the TV without any artifacts: without any missing lines, broken graphics, or distortion of the image. That is an obvious thing to do, but it turns out it is a very difficult thing to do. Because you are not scaling it in nice simple ratio and numbers. You’re scaling it in weird ratios, it is very difficult to scale from one relatively arbitrary ratio to another."
The viewable area of a TV varies tremendously from manufacturer to manufacturer, and to compensate for this over-scanning is tricky because you never get a fixed ratio, he said. Focus claims to be the only company with an arbitrary ratio scaler that does not introduce artifacts.
A second chip, the FS460, is designed to perform the same functions as the 450 but for multimedia applications, such as set-top boxes (STBs).
"We have a large effort going around the STB environment," Moyer said. "We see going after the graphics card business and notebook business as fundamental to our first level of growth, but we do see the STB market coming into its own, and because of the quality of our products there is both a hardware and chip silicon opportunity as well as a technology licensing opportunities."
Earlier this week, Focus announced a 3D PC graphics accelerator board based the 450 chip and Geneva-based STMicroelectronics’ (nyse: STM) KYRO II graphics chip. This reference design is expected to be available later this quarter.
"It is going to be the very first time the industry will see the highest quality TV-out available at the low end of the market for high end users," Moyer said. "The graphics guys use TV-out for gaming all the time. With STMicroelectronics and the 450 you get GeoForce 2 quality at about half the price."
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