Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Stoctrash who wrote (39247)	3/12/1999 4:20:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Audio encoders have a lead on video encoders...................... eet.com DVD recorders lag behind audio encoder chips By Yoshiko Hara EE Times (03/12/99, 9:23 a.m. EDT) TOKYO — With copyright issues still unresolved, DVD recorders are still a ways from becoming reality, but the audio encoder, a key component of DVD recorders, has moved out of the gate in the form of dedicated audio encoders, which will provide high-quality audio with compact, efficient compression. The Matsushita Group and Pioneer Electronic Corp., respectively, have developed AC-3 audio encoders that comply with the Dolby Digital Consumer Encoder (DDCE) standard, a subset of the Dolby AC-3 professional encoder. Full-function Dolby AC-3 encoding requires a high-performance DSP and high-speed memory, which consumes a lot of power, takes up a lot of space on a printed-circuit board and is costly. The professional version is unsuitable for consumers, who look for inexpensive, lightweight and compact products. The DDCE, however, has some limited Dolby AC-3 capabilities because it is being developed for consumer applications. A maximum of two channels can be encoded with DDCE while the professional version can do 5.1 channel encoding. The encoding algorithm is also simplified. The bitstream encoded on DDCE can be decoded by any AC-3-compliant decoders (DVD-Video players are one of them). Pioneer had been pushing the DVD-RW recording format, which has a 4.7-Gbyte capacity and rewrite capability of about 1,000 times. This format, however, has not yet been approved as a DVD family member, although Pioneer demonstrated a prototype recorder at the Japan Electronics Show last October. "Technically, we can make the recorder. But the copyright issue should be resolved before we take the next step," a Pioneer spokesman said. Pioneer composed the encoder chip set with Motorola's DSP and three 256-bit SRAMs. The company said it plans to use the DDCE encoder internally. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. and its Matsushita Electronics Corp. subsidiary followed Pioneer's move by announcing the development of a single-chip DDCE device, which Matsushita called the industry's first. The chip integrates all necessary blocks — a DSP, memories and interfaces — on an 18 x 18-mm chip. The core of the DSP was newly designed for audio encoding and has a 24-bit wide data bus and enhanced multiply/sum calculation capability that are essential for audio encoding. "The final target of the encoder chip is DVD-recorder application. But for the time being, the chip will find demand from other audio applications," a Matsushita representative said. The DDCE format enables CD-like quality, so computer soundboard applications will be the first step, he said. Matsushita said it will use the chip internally, but will sell it separately as well. Samples will be available in the fourth quarter of this year for about $58.