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To: DiViT who wrote (37597)	12/2/1998 6:33:00 PM
From: BillyG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Motorola to set Blackbird loose at CES eet.com By David Lammers EE Times (12/02/98, 6:06 p.m. EDT) AUSTIN, Texas — Motorola intends to make a big splash in the marketplace with its PowerPC-based architecture, code-named Blackbird, which will be rolled out with a new name as a formal product at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show. The show starts Jan. 7 in Las Vegas. Blackbird is a multifunction system, providing home users with a single box that can work as a game system, network computer, home broadband router and set-top box. Manufacturing specialist Solectron Corp. announced that it will build Blackbird systems, first for customers seeking reference designs. Commercial production is expected to begin in the first quarter of next year, and Motorola is holding discussions with some of the largest cable providers and telcos. Solectron has the ability to customize Blackbird for consumer-electronics companies and content aggregators that will use the hardware as part of their own assaults on the still-undefined digital entertainment experience, said Ray Burgess, general manager of the imaging and entertainment solutions (IES) group. Much of Blackbird's "middleware" software was developed with partners. Spyglass Inc. built a browser and other networking software that will allow companies to customize their own offerings and get to the retail channel by next year. Another key partner is VM Labs, a Silicon Valley-based game company headed up by former Atari Corp. president Richard Miller. VM Labs worked with Motorola to create a media processor, Nuon, which at different times has gone under the code names of Merlin and Project X, Burgess said. Nuon is a 128-bit VLIW engine that will work in tandem with the central processing unit in Blackbird, a PowerPC 860 core. VM Labs, which Burgess said has some of the world's best game-writing talent under its roof, is committed to developing Blackbird-based games that are played competitively over the Internet. The Blackbird silicon, including the Nuon media processor, will allow images to be "entirely modeled and drawn in real-time, rather than using pre-drawn images," which require impractical amounts of bandwidth, he said. Burgess said he envisions consumer-electronics companies customizing the Blackbird reference design and providing it to content aggregators. Those companies would provide customers with Blackbird-based systems and middleware, deriving part of their revenues from the movies, games, and other services that would run on the Blackbird hardware. "Many of the largest consumer-electronics companies, such as Philips, have used hardware developed outside. Buying something like Blackbird is not anathema to them," Burgess said, noting that both Thomson Multimedia and Toshiba Corp. issued endorsements of the Blackbird concept at the international broadcaster's conference (IBC) in Stuttgart. Blackbird is not the only game in town at the IES group. Motorola and Kodak shortly will announce that they are ready to provide a solid-state image-capture system, which includes a CMOS image sensor aimed at the emerging digital video camera marketplace rather than digital still cameras. The device has on-chip circuitry that compresses the image before output over a wired or wireless channel. With digital video, many times only a few pixels change from frame to frame, and the system only needs to process and compress those few pixels. That allows really significant amounts of compression," Burgess said. The Motorola-Kodak device initially will not be marketed to digital still camera vendors, he said, because in the 1- to 2-megapixel camera market, the manufacturers of CCDs (charge-coupled devices) can maintain a price advantage, he said. Motorola has worked closely with Sarnoff labs in the digital television arena. Last week in Japan, Sarnoff announced that it has completed a DTV reference design, based on silicon from Motorola. A decompression device with 3.8 million transistors has taped out and goes into production in December, while a much larger baseband processing chip will be ready in the first quarter of 1999, Davis said. Those chips will be formally unveiled, with more details about specifications and pricing, prior to the CES show.

To: DiViT who wrote (37597)	12/2/1998 7:10:00 PM
From: BillyG	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

ATI Technologies Inc., Newbridge Networks and PixStream demonstrate head-end to set-top box cable solution at the Western Cable Show newsalert.com ATI provides full graphics, video and TV-out functionality for the set top cable market THE WESTERN CABLE SHOW, ANAHEIM, CA, Dec. 2 /CNW-PRN/ - ATI Technologies Inc. (TSE: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYTF), Newbridge Networks Corporation (NYSE: NN; TSE: NNC), and PixStream Incorporated announced today that they are demonstrating an end-to-end cable solution at the Western Cable Show. This ''head-end to front-end'' solution highlights PixStream's Video Distribution solutions coupled with the Newbridge(R) multi-services core networking solutions and ATI's set-top box chip set offerings. The demonstration is being shown in Newbridge Networks' booth at the tradeshow. The Western Cable show, sponsored by the California Cable Television Association and CableLabs, will highlight CableNET(R) '98 and reflect the cable industry's efforts to achieve interoperable hardware and software, services that will work together on cable systems no matter where they originated. ATI poised to lead the set top market ATI is a technology leader in the emerging set-top market and was selected by General Instrument to provide full graphics, video and TV-out functionality for millions of set top cable boxes. ATI's highly integrated graphics technology is ideal to provide the graphics and video acceleration for set top units. More than 67 per cent of US homes with TVs receive their TV signals via cable companies. ''ATI's industry-leading graphics, video, DVD/MPEG acceleration and TV-out technology produces set top boxes that are feature rich,'' said Henry Quan, vice president of corporate marketing, ATI. ''At Newbridge's booth at the Western Cable Show, you will see how ATI can enable the cable industry, from video, to the internet to DVD to the many new VBI services that will soon be available.'' The demonstrated Newbridge broadband multiservices solution combines an ATM/IP internetworking platform with standards-based, broadband cable access to cost effectively deliver a comprehensive portfolio of voice, Internet, data and digital broadcast/interactive video services to residential and business customers. ''The Newbridge solutions offer cable operators the ability to increase their revenue opportunities by delivering differentiated services and tiered class of service levels, supporting high-value applications, to their customers.'' said Conrad Lewis, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President, Access Products Group, Newbridge Networks. ''This demonstration with PixStream and ATI highlights our ability to integrate applications on both ends of the network.'' ''This demonstration underlines our ability to deliver networked digital video,'' said Stephen Bacso, President & CEO of PixStream, a Newbridge Affiliate. ''Using PixStream solutions, high quality video can be transported with lower per channel distribution costs enabling customers to economically introduce new leading-edge video services and applications.'' The 31st Western Cable Show, with the theme ''Cable Clicks!'', is being held at the Anaheim Convention Center with over 400 exhibitors offering the latest in programming, products and services. The show is expecting 25,000 national and international attendees from the cable industry, as well as the worlds of computers and telephony. Corporate Profiles ATI Technologies Inc., the world's largest supplier of 3D graphics and multimedia technology, designs, manufactures and markets innovative and award-winning multimedia solutions and graphics components for personal computers, set-top boxes and emerging computer-based consumer appliances. An ISO 9002 company, ATI is the world's leading supplier of video and 2D/3D graphics accelerators to OEM and retail customers. Founded in 1985, ATI employs more than 1,500 people at headquarters in Thornhill, Ontario, and in offices in the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Barbados, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Japan. For other ATI news releases visit our web site at atitech.com. Newbridge Networks designs, manufactures, markets and services networking solutions to organizations in more than 100 countries throughout the world. The Company leverages its relationship with a growing family of Newbridge Affiliate companies and strategic alliances with Siemens and 3Com Corporation to deliver seamless, end-to-end solutions. Newbridge customers include the world's 300 largest telecommunications service providers and more than 10,000 corporations, government organizations and other institutions. Founded in 1986, the Company employs more than 6,000 people on five continents. News and information are available at www.newbridge.com. PixStream Incorporated, based in Waterloo, Ontario, develops, manufactures and markets solutions that enable network service providers and enterprises to reliably distribute and manage digital video. PixStream is a Newbridge Affiliate. Founded in 1996, PixStream is an acknowledged leader in the emerging CompactPCI standard. News and information are available at www.pixstream.com. All company and/or product names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright(C) ATI Technologies Inc., 1998. All company and/or product names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective manufacturers. Features, pricing, availability and specifications are subject to change without notice. SOURCE ATI Technologies Inc. /CONTACT: ATI Technologies Inc., Brian Hentschel, Media Relations, (905) 882-2600 (ext. 8130), bhentsch(at)atitech.ca, www.atitech.com; Press Contacts: PixStream Incorporated, Dave Caputo, VP - Marketing, (519) 884-4196; Newbridge Networks Corporation, Christopher Fox, Corporate Communications, (613) 591-3600, cfox(at)newbridge.com/ (ATY. ATYTF NNC. NN)

To: DiViT who wrote (37597)	12/7/1998 9:12:00 AM
From: BillyG	Respond to of 50808

Digital interface debate resurfaces at Western show eet.com By Junko Yoshida and George Leopold EE Times (12/04/98, 2:56 p.m. EDT) ANAHEIM, Calif. — A battle over a copy-protected digital interface resurfaced here at the Western Show this week, pitting five companies led by consumer giant Sony Corp. against a separate group of electronics manufacturers spearheaded by Thomson Consumer Electronics and Zenith Electronics Corp. On the Sony team, known as 5C, are Hitachi, Intel, Matsushita and Toshiba. The five have developed what they call the industry's first encryption-based IEEE 1394 link layer, called the Digital Transmission Content Protection Method (DTCP). Zenith and Thomson are promoting a smart-card-based renewable encryption scheme called Extended Conditional Access, or XCA, which the partners have submitted to a Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association (CEMA) panel reviewing copy-protection schemes. The encryption-enabled digital interface is a pivotal piece of technology that would link digital cable or satellite set-tops, VCRs, DVD players and PCs to digital TV sets. The interface would prevent unauthorized copying of digital programming. The renewed cross-industry bickering over the incompatible DTCP and XCA schemes could slow resolution of the DTV-cable interface issue. The debate prompted regulators last summer to press the cable and consumer-electronics industries to work things out quickly, out of fear that the issue could slow introduction of digital TV in the United States. Uncertainty about encryption could also have implications for other digital consumer products beyond cable set-tops. For instance, Sony and Quantum Corp. last week demonstrated a new audiovisual technique for storing TV programs on a hard drive. Without an industry agreement on a universal interface and encryption scheme, Quantum's new storage device won't be linked to some DTV receivers. Sony and other companies that have played key roles in developing DTCP for the 1394 interface claim their technology has already been approved by multiple industries, including PC makers, consumer-electronics firms and Hollywood studios. Further, Sony has developed functional silicon by implementing a DTCP-based encryption and a key-exchange method. Sony said its chip will be commercially available next spring. DTCP grew directly out of the digital transmission discussion group within the Copy Protection Technical Working Group, an ad-hoc cross-industry group, said Scott Smyers, vice president of the Interconnect Architecture Laboratory at U.S.-based Sony Electronics. "Our new 1394 link-layer chip is designed to meet all the requirements set by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)," Smyers added. Specifically, he said the chip responds to MPAA's request for installing "some means of authentication" in the digital interface so that two digital consumer devices can legitimately copy digital content. An MPAA spokesman in Washington said the "5C [proposal] is a great start. We won't consider it the Rosetta Stone just yet." He added, "We've never said there is one standard way to go about" copy protection. Thomson and Zenith, meanwhile, insist that nothing is settled in the digital copy-protection debate. "The 5C copy-protection scheme may give the impression that it has gone several steps ahead of our XCA proposal," Paul Snopko, director of electronic systems R&D at Zenith (Glenview, Ill.), said here last week. "But in reality, no digital-consumer products exist on the market yet" with either competing encryption scheme. "In that sense, we are still at the same starting line," Snopko said. Howard Mirowitz, vice president of Mitsubishi Electric America (Sunnyvale, Calif.), agreed that different industry groups are offering alternatives to the five-company copy-protection scheme. Matsushita is believed to be looking for a copy-protection plan for an analog-component interface, and a separate group is promoting a different copy-generation management-system approach, Mirowitz said. The Thomson-Zenith scheme is designed for both one- and two-way digital interfaces, and uses a renewable security system. Specifically, XCA could be used with a one-way digital interface like the EIA-762 RF remodulator standard as well as the IEEE 1394 interface. By contrast, DTCP has been specifically designed for 1394. The DTCP-enabled 1394 link may be "a good solution for an $8,000 digital TV, but would you want the same expensive 1394-based digital interface for a kitchen TV?" Snopko asked. Thomson and Zenith described their approach as "a simple, elegant and cost-effective solution designed for a range of different digital consumer products." Sony and its partners, meanwhile, argue that the 1394 interface was chosen for its inherent two-way communication capability. "MPAA has demanded that we install both encryption and authentication mechanisms in the digital interface," an industry source said. That requirement left the 5C group no choice but to use 1394, the source said. The Sony camp remains skeptical about the smart-card-based renewable security approach proposed by XCA backers. They wonder how the approach could succeed in the United States, where, as one source said, "smart cards were raised and shot down so many times already." The 5C team is also concerned about the cost of renewable security. The group said it remains unclear who would pay for a new smart card for each digital device, at a cost of as much as $50 per display device. Snopko and others stressed that a number of satellite decoders and cable set-top boxes are already equipped with a smart-card slot, even though they may not be widely used yet in the United States. Smart cards will likely be paid for by service providers tied to specific encrypted services, proponents said. Thomson and Zenith believe they are building momentum for their proposal by working with CableLabs, the cable industry's research arm, and by submitting it to a CEMA engineering panel called Working Group 2. The group was formed to evaluate the impact of different architectures for protecting copyrighted digital content on consumer-electronic devices. A spokeswoman for CEMA (Arlington, Va.) said the group will continue seeking industry proposals for copy protection until the end of December while soliciting a list of requirements from MPAA and other video, audio and software providers on the types of protection features they want in digital consumer products. The spokeswoman said multiple solutions are possible, and that CEMA will likely let the market decide which is best. Working Group 2 is scheduled to complete a report on the copy-protection issue by the end of January. It remains unclear for now exactly what kind of support the XCA group can expect from the cable industry. David Robinson, senior vice president and general manager of digital network systems at set-top maker General Instrument Corp. (Horsham, Pa.), said GI is committed to using the 1394 interface for its digital set-tops. He predicted XCA would only play an interim role.