Super VCD............................................
C-Cube Partners With Chinese Consumer Electronics Giants To Establish New Digital Video Entertainment Format
Business Wire - June 09, 1998 08:15
%C-CUBE-MICROSYSTEMS CUBE %CALIFORNIA %COMPUTERS %ELECTRONICS %COMED %PRODUCT V%BW P%BW
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SHANGHAI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 9, 1998--
New CVD Audio/Video Format Leverages C-Cube's New CVDx1 Decoder to Address Need for Affordable, High-Quality Consumer Home Theatre
Platform in China
C-Cube Microsystems, (Nasdaq: CUBE) the market leader in digital video technology, today introduced CVDx1, the world's first production silicon solution to enable the new China Video Disc platform (CVD). CVD is a high image quality audio/video entertainment format developed specifically for the world's largest consumer market -- China. The CVD format was launched today by China's leading consumer electronics manufacturers to improve the picture quality and audio performance of the existing VideoCD platform. CVD extends VideoCD to MPEG-2 video quality and offers advanced audio performance as well as other consumer features, such as user-selectable overlay graphics for subtitles and karaoke lyrics. C-Cube's new single-chip CVDx1 decoder is the enabling technology that is allowing China's leading consumer electronics OEMs to easily deliver low-cost players based on this enhanced digital video platform.
Demonstrating the industry momentum behind this new format, China's leading consumer product manufacturers including ChangHong, Idall, Malata, SAST, Xiamin Solid, BBK, TCL and DiWA, have adopted C-Cube's new CVD solution as the core of their CVD players. C-Cube worked closely with these companies to define a new format that offers Chinese consumers an affordable and compelling home theatre experience for the enjoyment of movies, karaoke and educational titles. This announcement further demonstrates C-Cube's ability to understand and respond to the needs of its markets and leverage these established relationship in delivering the critical technology to the world's largest consumer digital video market.
"By closely partnering with China's top OEMs and content providers, we have gained a unique understanding of China's emerging consumer electronics market, providing us with the partners and insight to further serve this vast consumer digital video opportunity," said Nai-Ting Hsu, senior vice president of Asia Pacific for C-Cube Microsystems. "CVD offers a true home theatre entertainment experience that combines the affordability of China's existing VideoCD infrastructure with the video quality of MPEG-2. C-Cube is excited to be working with China's premier technology partners and manufacturers to bring new home entertainment products to millions of Chinese consumers."
Driven by SAST, ChangHong, Idall, Xiamen Solid, and Malata, this new market opportunity fully exercises their expertise in product development, production, retail marketing and service. These manufacturing giants engaged C-Cube to define and develop the system-level audio/video core to drive these new consumer platforms. Leveraging established content, authoring and technology partners in the VideoCD market, C-Cube worked to create the infrastructure to support this new digital video and audio format.
"We know from experience that C-Cube provides us with a combination of cutting-edge technology and reliability that's crucial in the development and release of a new consumer product," said Mr. Hu, President and CEO of Idall. "Using the new CVD technology, we can launch products into the rapidly growing DVD market without compromising the established popularity of VCD titles."
"CVD is a product jointly developed by China's leading high-tech companies. Lots of money, manpower, and dedication were invested to make it a reality today," said Mr. Lin, CEO of SAST. "The tremendous success of VCD in China is a result of the combination of technological improvement and China consumer market needs. As China transitions into a more technologically advanced country and China's standard of living improves, consumer demand for high quality AV entertainment systems have heightened. CVD was born from this demand."
About CVD
CVD adopts the most advanced MPEG-2 encoding and decoding technology to deliver a high quality audio/video entertainment platform for China's distinguishing consumers. CVD offers MPEG-2 at 1/2 and 2/3 resolutions, which is up to four times clearer than conventional VCD. CVD supports variable bit rate (VBR) MPEG-2 compression similar to that found in DVD, allowing up to fifty minutes of high-quality MPEG-2 video on a standard CVD disc. CVD also supports multiple-language soundtracks, allowing up to four different languages to be included on a single disc. Subtitling is also simplified with text being added after MPEG-2 compression, resulting in clearer lyrics.
CVD exercises the full potential of China's leading television display technology to optimise the viewing experience. CVD delivers dual stereo channels, up to four monaural channels and unique sound effects. In addition, CVD offers high quality lyrics with clarity that is not achievable with today's VideoCD platform. This unique lyrics feature is excellent for karaoke and educational purposes. CVD is also backwards compatible with audio CD, VideoCD 1.1 and VideoCD2.0 standards.
To Chinese manufacturers, CVD represents the technology for the new millennium. "CVD is a cross-century audio/video hardware platform," said Mr. Zhao, chief technology officer for ChangHong. "C-Cube's MPEG-2 core leverages the industry's most proven digital video technology. MPEG-2 is the video standard enabling the deployment of digital video satellite communication, digital wire broadcast, DVD, and eventually HDTV. In the future, CVD may evolve into a multifunctional, convergent platform, that will give CVD a new meaning -- Convergent Video Disc."
About C-Cube's CVDx1 Decoder
C-Cube's CVDx combines all the necessary audio, video and system-level decoding functions in a single-chip solution, providing OEMs with the only integrated audio/video platform available for today's CVD players. The CVDx1 supports all the critical features for CVD, including MPEG-2 1/2 and 2/3 D1 video decoding, two-channel stereo decoding, 5.1 channel sound, multiple language support, lyric insertion, smooth scrolling and clear color change. This solution also supports display resolutions of 480 x 480 for NTSC and 480 x 576 for PAL to provide optimal video clarity for China's best selling television monitors.
About C-Cube Microsystems
C-Cube Microsystems Inc is the industry leader in the development and delivery of highly integrated digital video silicon solutions that address the consumer electronics, communications and convergence markets. C-Cube is headquartered in Milpitas, California with offices in North America, Europe and Asia. Its stock is traded on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol CUBE. C-Cube can be reached at +1.408.490.6300 or on the World Wide Web at c-cube.com.
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The C-Cube logo is a registered trademark of C-Cube Microsystems Inc. C-Cube is a trademark of C-Cube Microsystems Inc.
CONTACT: C-Cube Microsystems
Mary Giani, 408/490-8628
mgiani@c-cube.com
or
Nick Kormeluck, 408/490-8052
nkormeluk@c-cube.com
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