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Technology Stocks : Innovacom (MPEG), [announced single chip MPEG-2 encoder] -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: George Thompson who wrote (5272)	4/16/1998 10:57:00 PM
From: MUEPO	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6297

Hey George, I received an email from someone who would take issue with my way of thinking. Single to me means one. However CUBE seems to differ. Anyway take a read and comment. Muepo, I lurk on the Ccube and Innovacom threads. They are very entertaining. I am a SW engineer at DiviCom and we are not allowed to post on SI. But we all lurk! I've seen enough conjecture about single chip/two chip encoding that I'm compelled to speak up. I admit I am biased towards Ccube, but if a better encoding chip comes along, DiviCom needs to consider using it. We are, bar none, the largest consumer of MPEG2 silicon on the planet. DiviCom's fourth generation broadcast encoder uses Ccube's new DVx chip. We put three of them on our board because they're so damn cheap. One is currently not used, but the other two are both doing full single chip encoding. There is a delay between the two chips, so that one can encode and pass on what it learned to the second chip. The second chip does the final encoding (of each and every frame) with information about the frames that it is about to see! We are getting a lot of recognition for our two chip implementation. It is not a short-coming of the chip. It is two single chip encoders running in harmony. We call it twin chip encoding. It is the best quality compression that the industry has seen. We also do professional encoding (4:2:2 profile). The NTSC solution is one chip. The PAL solution is two chips because it needs more memory for the larger PAL frames. When selling broadcast and professional encoders, the price of the chip set at the heart of the encoder is not that important. The quality of the compression at a given bitrate is 90% of the ball game. I will seek out a demonstration from Innovacom, when they can do one, and compare their solution at a given bitrate to the DVx solution at the same bitrate. We have done that most recently with IBM. Ccube's encoders, because of their algorithm experts, continue to be the best that we can find. I wish Koz luck. I don't think he has the algorithm wherewithall to produce a competitive chip, though. Someday he may produce a chip that works, but that doesn't guarantee sales. Encoder technology is a crazy place to try to make money. Ccube funds their encoder group by selling millions of VCD chips in China. The encoding market is small. It will grow in the future, but not for a couple of years at least. Encoding silicon is very expensive to design. It hasn't paid for itself yet. At any company. Encoding systems is another story. :-) Sorry to be so long winded. Just had to vent. Long on MPEG (Moving Pictures Expert Group), Sorry I do not know how to do italics and bolds!