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To: BillyG who wrote (37280)	11/17/1998 12:18:00 PM
From: DiViT	Respond to of 50808

Quadrant introduces software-based MPEG-2 encoder 11/16/98 DVD Report (c) 1998 Phillips Business Information, Inc. Quadrant International (QI; Malvern, PA) is using this week's Comdex show in Las Vegas, NV, to introduce its new CineMaster RT software-based real-time MPEG-2 video encoder. Recordable DVD is one of many potential applications for the new encoder, QI told DVD Report last week. QI's main competitor in the consumer MPEG-2 encoding arena is C - Cube , which has announced a price of $75 for its new DVxplore encoding chip (DVD Report, November 9), with DVxplore-based peripherals expected to hit the market for about $300 in 1999. QI's software-based encoder will require more processor overhead, but will be subtantially less expensive. "We're talking about a total street price, for what could be produced at the OEMs, of something significantly less than $50, because it's software with just the video-in hardware required," said QI vice president of marketing Leonard Sharp. "We're not positioning this as a DVD authoring system. We're really going after the hobbyist, the corporate user, the casual user - anyone who wants to take in video content and turn it into DVD-quality video with DVD kinds of compression rates." QI claims that the encoder, which runs on a Pentium II 400 mHz processor, is the only system that can run on today's commercially available PC processors. While Quadrant emphasizes that the encoder is not tied to any specific application or recording medium, digital video recording will obviously lend itself well to recordable DVD technology. The first systems using the QI encoder will likely arrive in the satellite receiver market in the second quarter of 1999, Sharp said. PC equipment should be on the market in time for the "back to school" selling season next year, probably including software-based HDTV capabilities as well. Just as DVD-equipped PCs are expected to outpace set-top DVD- Video players, Sharp believes that HDTV will soon be more prevalent on the desktop than in the living room. "While it may not be the primary application of the PC, I think that HDTV is going to be introduced to a lot more users through the PC than through $10,000 sets," Sharp said. "This phenomenon of introducing technology on the PC in high volume and at low costs is going to turn out to be the real catalyst for a lot of consumer products, because you've already got the digital processing power in the PC." Contact: Quadrant International, phone: 610-251-9999, or on the Web: www.qi.com

To: BillyG who wrote (37280)	11/17/1998 12:19:00 PM
From: DiViT	Respond to of 50808

Quadrant Debuts MPEG-2 Software Codec 11/16/98 Multimedia Week (c) 1998 Phillips Business Information, Inc. Quadrant International plans to give a technology demonstration of an MPEG-2 software codec running on a 400 MHz Pentium II at Comdex this week. Company officials hope to show a simultaneous encode and decode and offer the same functionality as C - Cube Microsystems Inc. [CUBE] is providing in hardware with the DVXplore chip. "As we found out with DVD, there's not a whole lot of OEM volume at the $300 price point," said Leonard Sharp, Quadrant vice president of marketing. "With the large OEMs, we believe we can deliver our entire suite at under $20, probably under $10." Given the bad rap software encoders have in PC circles, Sharp may face an uphill battle, particularly when trying to sell to OEMs adding rewritable DVD (DVD-RAM) drives to their PCs. After making a large investment in the drives, they are unlikely to skimp on decoders. But Sharp doesn't think DVD-RAM is the only application for his encoder. With hard drive space fast surpassing 10 GB in high-end systems, he expects vendors waiting on DVD-RAM still will see the need for MPEG-2 encoders. The company also will show an implementation of the software used to decode digital TV signals in conjunction with a 450 MHz Pentium II processor and graphics boards featuring Nvidia Corp.'s Rage 128 graphics board and 3Dfx Interactive Inc.'s Banshee. Sharp said the company has been able to achieve 720p on the PC by using the codec in conjunction with a hardware assist from graphics boards. On the DVD-Video front, Quadrant has signed up two additional manufacturers in Japan to use the company's software navigator. Sharp declined to name the companies but expects them to begin shipping product in the second quarter of '99. (Quadrant, 408/779-4727)