Smells like DVxplore is a bit delayed to me...
Shipments of MPEG-2 expected to more than double -- Shift from analog to digital provides major opportunity
05/17/1999
Electronic Buyers' News
Page 56
Copyright 1999 CMP Publications Inc.
Driven by the extensive conversion in consumer-electronic products from analog to digital technologies, and pushed also by the convergence of consumer and computing applications, shipments of MPEG-2 silicon are expected to jump from $323 million this year to $704 million in 2002, according to Dataquest Inc., San Jose.
MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) is an evolving set of standards for digital video and audio compression and decompression in a number of consumer products, including DVD, HDTV, and digital cable. Currently, MPEG-2, used mainly in DVDs and digital TVs, is the in-vogue version, although a new standard is under development and is three or four years away from commercialization, according to industry analysts.
As consumer-electronic products move from analog to digital, big markets are opening up for suppliers of MPEG chips. China, for example, is becoming a major purchaser of digital consumer electronics and is a natural fit for MPEG-1 VCRs because it never developed an analog-VCR market, said Johnston Chen, vice president of consumer products at ESS Technology Inc., Fremont, Calif.
China is also developing a robust DVD market, in which ESS has scored a number of design wins with its ES4108 chip, according to Chen. The ES4108, which meets the Super VCD standard for DVDs recently set by China's National Committee of Standards, is a highly integrated solution that incorporates MPEG-2 video and audio, on-screen display, karaoke, system navigation software, and a graphic overlay, he said.
"Since the introduction of ES4108 in October 1998, ESS has shipped more than 2 million units, making it the fastest-growing new product in our history," Chen added.
Last December, ESS announced the Swan, its second-generation integrated chip for the global DVD market. The chip includes an MPEG-2 audio/video decoder, a subpicture decoder, Dolby Digital (AC-3) audio, and DVD navigation software, said Chen, adding that the device is backward-compatible with VCD and could help narrow the price gap between the Chinese DVD standard and more expensive DVD players.
Despite its current economic woes, Japan stands alongside China as a lucrative Asian market for consumer-electronic products, particularly DVDs and set-top-box solutions for digital-satellite reception, according to Alain Bismuth, vice president of sales and marketing of consumer products at Oak Technology Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif.
Oak today announced its OTI-8215, a single-chip set-top-box system processor with real-time MPEG-2 audio-visual decoding targeted at the digital satellite, cable, and terrestrial TV markets. The integrated chip performs MPEG-2 A/V decompression and can also demultiplex MPEG system-level compressed data streams, Bismuth said.
The chip integrates a Sun Microsystems' 100-MHz MicroSPARC RISC core that manages all of the internal traffic routing, as well as the decoding of picture headers and handling of A/V synchronization, he said.
"The OTI-8215 features six independent display surfaces, enabling a wide range of on-screen video and graphics combinations," Bismuth said. The primary video surface displays decoded MPEG-2 video, he added.
The OTI-8215 will be available in the third quarter for $25 in 10,000s.
With the advent of MPEG-2, the consumer-electronics industry has solved not only the problem of decoding video streams, but audio streams as well, noted Simon Dolan, vice president of consumer-products marketing at LSI Logic Corp., Milpitas, Calif. "This is important because 'video is video,' so OEMs must seek to differentiate their products by fine-tuning MPEG audio, or Dolby or DTS [digital theater sound] that works with MPEG," Dolan said.
LSI Logic's L64002, which has scored a number of design wins, according to the company, is a single-chip MPEG-2 source decoder that combines a video decoder with a two-channel MPEG audio decoder.
"The architectural elements of the device were developed to enable a unique feature set that provides a complete cost-effective solution for compressed digital interactive-TV applications," Dolan said. These elements include a customized RISC engine, a video display, and a graphics controller.
LSI Logic's newer-generation L64005 is the MPEG-2 A/V decoder element in the company's Integra 1000 architecture for set-top boxes, and is software-compatible with the L64002. The integrated decoder enables the display of PAL format (720 x 576) video with full-screen 16-color display using only 16 Mbits of DRAM, "unlike competitive solutions that require 20 Mbits for PAL," Dolan said.
C - Cube Microsystems Inc. is working on the cutting edge of the convergence between consumer electronics and computing. Last November, the company introduced DVxplore, a single-chip MPEG-2 and DV codec for recording DVD on a PC.
DVxplore can be used in PC/TV and DVD-RAM applications to record DVD-quality video obtained from a variety of video sources such as TV, VCR, DV camcorder, or analog camcorder, according to Umesh Padval, president of C - Cube 's Semiconductor Division, Milpitas.
DVxplore also enables editing and playback of DVD-quality video on standard PCs and then storing it to a DVD disk, Web pages, e-mail, or PC hard drives, he said.
DVxplore includes a time-shifting capability that enables PC users to record a TV show while simultaneously playing back video from any point in the recording, Padval added. VCR-type controls allow users to rewind to the beginning of TV programs while they are still being recorded, as well as replay instantly.
DVxplore is now being shipped to OEMs, and products based on the codec are expected to reach retail markets by the third quarter. The device is priced at $75 in volume quantities. -B.A.
May 17, 1999 |
