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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BillyG who wrote (31770)	4/2/1998 4:27:00 PM
From: DiViT	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

Another DVD laptop. This one has HW DVD optional.. newsalert.com Transmonde Vivante SE and XL Notebooks Feature 266 MHz Mobile Pentium II Processors, Quick Upgrades; Transmonde First to Feature Three-day Upgradability Business Wire - April 02, 1998 13:15 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CERRITOS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 2, 1998--Users of Transmonde Technologies' Vivante SE and XL notebook computers will now be able to upgrade to the newly announced 233 or 266 MHz Intel(R) Mobile Pentium(R) II Processor, Transmonde announced today. New Vivante buyers will now be able to order the notebooks with either of the newly announced Mobile Pentium II processors, then upgrade to newer-model Mobile Pentium II processors when available. The Vivante SE features a 13.3" XGA display; support for up to 256MB SDRAM; up to 5GB hard drive; PCI-based 64-voice Wavetable audio, an advanced Synaptics TouchWriter(tm) touchpad/writing device and a modular bay that can be used with a variety of storage media -- floppy disk drive, 24X CD-ROM, Zip(tm) drive, LS-120 drive or DVD. Options include a hardware MPEG-2 decoder and Mediaphile PAS audio speaker system. One of the first notebooks to be fully PC97 compliant, the new Vivante SE stands 1.8" high and weighs 6.8 lbs. Prices start at $2,199 for a 166MHz Pentium Processor with MMX technology; starting price with a 233MHz Intel Mobile Pentium II processor is $2,599. The Vivante XL includes a 14.1" XGA display; support for up to 25

To: BillyG who wrote (31770)	4/2/1998 4:41:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

TeraLogic doesn't have an MPEG-2 decoder in it's settop design........ ijumpstart.com Semiconductor designer TeraLogic Inc. has started sampling DTV chips and already has lined up four companies planning to source the silicon for use in set-top boxes. U.K.-based set-top box manufacturers Toshiba Consumer Products, Vestel Electronics of Turkey (the third largest TV tuner manufacturer in Europe) and Symbionics Ltd. will incorporate the 32-bit TL750 graphics and video processor into hardware this fall. Raghu Rao, TeraLogic director of marketing, said he expects Toshiba to be the first to market in the third quarter with a product that includes the chip. Symbionics will use a board that incorporates the TL750 and an MPEG-2 decoder from Toshiba Electronics Europe. In addition, TeraLogic has inked a deal with Acorn Group plc, which will incorporate the chip into a reference design and make that available to hardware companies. Michael Bernstein, an analyst with Semico Research, believes the company has a head start in the set-top market. "They have a lot of good contacts, a complete solution and experience of doing it at LSI Logic [LLSI]," he said. TeraLogic will make a reference design available next month for software developers for $9,500. The platform, called Puma, includes a 233 MHz StrongARM SA-110 processor from Digital Semiconductor Corp. [DEC], 8 MB of SDRAM, 4 MB flash memory, 2.1 GB hard drive, CATV tuner for PAL or NTSC systems, IR keyboard and hand-held TV remote, 56K modem, 5.1-channel interface, keyboard and mouse interfaces and several video inputs and outputs.

To: BillyG who wrote (31770)	4/2/1998 4:59:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

IBM's single chip encoders due in Q2, 98..................... ijumpstart.com Recognizing the significant growth potential in the MPEG-2 encoding market, IBM Microelectronics [IBM] has announced the expansion of its existing digital video product line to include next-generation, highly efficient single chip MPEG-2 encoders. The technological advancements behind IBM's new chip design promises to have positive impact on many manufacturers, including Lucent Technologies [LU], Tektronix, Leitch, Optibase, Tiernan, and Sonic Solutions [SNIC], all of whom currently incorporate IBM chips into their MPEG-2 products, such as encoders, decoders, and set-top boxes. "The new chips are basically super sets of the older three-chip sets from a functional standpoint. But, since three chips are being replaced by one chip, this new MPEG-2 product family will offer greater performance, require significantly less power, and generate less heat than the previous generation of chips," says Don Leake, manager for digital video products (including MPEG-2 4:2:2 decoder chips) for IBM Microelectronics, (http://www.chips.ibm.com), a division of IBM, in Yorktown, New York, "Manufacturers that use these new chips will find that those attributes will make their MPEG-2 encoders more attractive to prospective buyers." The three new single chip products, which support the international standard MPEG-2 4:2:2 Main Profile at Main Level (MP@ML), include: the MPEG-2 Professional Studio Encoder (MPEGS422), for high-quality video compression; the MPEG-2 Professional Broadcast Encoder (MPEGS420), which adds extensions for higher-quality 4:2:0 chroma video compression for high-end applications like DVD mastering; and the MPEG-2 I-Frame Video Encoder (MPEGSI), the industry's only product dedicated to I-frame encoding. The I-Frame (or intra-frame) encoder can be used for nonlinear editing since each I-Frame contains all the information needed to reconstruct a single frame. However, since there are no P-Frames and B-frames to perform the predictive processes, compression ratios tend to be lower. The fourth product in the new chip family is actually a multi-chip set consisting of either two or four of the MPEGS422 chips mounted on a different carrier that supplies a more highly-optimized connection enabling HDTV work. Leake noted, "Our design goal was to provide support for a wide range of DTV formats, including 1920 x 1080i." By ganging several chips together, IBM's chip designers accomplished this goal by extending the MPEG search range and motion estimation, as well as offer the maximum pixel addressability necessary to provide support for all the formats proliferating for HDTV.