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Fujitsu Ten, iBiquity Digital ink technology development deal
DETROIT, MI - iBiquity Digital, the leading provider of digital AM and FM radio broadcast technology in the U.S., and Japan based Fujitsu Ten, a leading automotive receiver manufacturer, today announced they have signed a Joint Technology and Marketing Development Agreement. Under the terms of their agreement, the companies have agreed to further the implementation of iBiquity Digital's AM and FM digital radio broadcast technology, iDAB, and work together to develop a product marketing and technology development plan for Fujitsu Ten digital radio receivers. Today, radio in the United States is broadcast using analog signals. iBiquity Digital's iDAB technology will enable AM and FM broadcasters to transmit a digital signal capable of integrating CD-quality audio with crystal clear reception and wireless data signals. This integrated audio and data transmission capability will enable a variety of consumer applications, such as station and program content, stock and news information, local traffic and weather, and much more. "This agreement is a big step in the direction of supplying our iDAB technology to auto manufacturers," said Robert J. Struble, President and CEO of iBiquity Digital. "Fujitsu Ten is a leading supplier of mobile automotive radio products and we are very pleased that they have chosen to partner with iBiquity in bringing this next generation of AM and FM radio, with its enhanced sound quality and exciting new technology and applications, to America's driving public. "iBiquity Digital, with its iDAB broadcasting technology, is a major force in the revolution of in-vehicle entertainment and information services," said Tatuo Ito, Department General Manager, Research & Development Department, Fujitsu Ten. "We are delighted to team with iBiquity Digital in the development of radio receivers for seamless digital broadcasts of high-quality audio entertainment and unprecedented new services." Fujitsu Ten also markets mobile electronics to the aftermarket under the Eclipse brand name.
http://www.12volt.com/archive_files/us111600.html.
NRSC Endorses FM IBOC
by Leslie Stimson
Ibiquity Digital Corp. has cleared an important hurdle on the road to commercial rollout of its in-band, on-channel digital audio broadcasting system.
The standards-setting body evaluating the viability and practicality of implementing IBOC digital radio has studied Ibiquity’s FM system and declared it "a significant improvement" over analog.
The DAB Subcommittee of the National Radio Systems Committee has recommended that the FCC approve the system for use in the United States, specifically citing its "greatly reduced impact of multipath interference (for mobile, portable and fixed receivers alike); superior resistance to co-channel and adjacent channel interference; support for enhanced data services and improved audio quality."
In a more than 200-page document released in late November, the NRSC achieves a long-stated goal. After nearly a decade of encouraging IBOC development, the NRSC now states definitively that IBOC has significantly enhanced performance over analog.
‘Remarkably robust’
"A lot of the data is quantifiable. We have analog data and new digital data that can be compared handily," said NRSC DAB Subcommittee Chairman Milford Smith.
"The whole goal is to come up with something that’s better than what we’ve got. This is a remarkably robust system that provides a lot of advantages for the listener."
By approving the system, the committee states, the FCC would be "charting the course for an efficient transition to digital broadcasting with minimal impact on existing analog FM operation and no new spectrum requirements."
Ibiquity President Robert Struble called the report a validation of Ibiquity’s FM system. He hoped the FCC would soon put the report out on Public Notice and seek public comment.
NAB President and CEO Eddie Fritts said the endorsement is "a key step in moving broadcasters into the digital era."
Unclear immediately after the NRSC action was what the FCC would do with the report. Several sources believed the commission would seek public comment on the document as a first step, then perhaps ask the NRSC to begin a formal standards-setting process. The commission easily could craft a blanket authorization for stations to implement IBOC, sources said.
Any of these scenarios would fit with Ibiquity’s goal of having transmitter partners Harris, Broadcast Electronics and Nautel show IBOC-compatible exciters and transmitters at NAB2002 in the spring.
Tradeoffs
However positive the NRSC is on IBOC, members were careful to say there will be tradeoffs in terms of compatibility between the digital signal and its impact on adjacent channels.
In the Ibiquity system, the digital sidebands of the host station sit in the first adjacent channel of the next station. The amount of digital energy being transmitted is relatively low, around 23 dB, but Ibiquity told the NRSC when it submitted its test results that field test results indicate there could be some impact on analog first-adjacents (RW, Sept. 12.)
Smith and NAB Science and Technology Vice President John Marino said the NRSC believes the tradeoffs are modest and acceptable.
"Some of the earlier versions of IBOC systems were horrific in terms of compatibility," said one source.
In its report, the NRSC wrote this about the implementation tradeoffs:
"With respect to the main channel audio signal, evaluation of test data shows that a small decrease in audio signal-to-noise ratio will be evident to some listeners in localized areas where first-adjacent stations, operating with the FM IBOC system, overlap the coverage of a desired station.
"However," the committee continued, "listeners in these particular areas may also be subject to adjacent channel analog interference, which will tend to mask the IBOC-related interference, most appropriately characterized as band-limited ‘white’ noise, rendering it inaudible under normal listening conditions.
"Also, all present-day mobile receivers include a stereo blend-to-mono function dynamically active under conditions of varying signal strength and adjacent channel interference. This characteristic of mobile receivers will also tend to mask any IBOC-related noise. The validity and effectiveness of these masking mechanisms is apparent from the rigorous subjective evaluations performed on the data obtained during the NRSC’s adjacent-channel testing."
The committee provided further findings about the impact on non-host analog signals:
"Co-channel interference: no impact on analog reception.
"First-adjacent channel interference: listeners within the protected contour should not perceive an impact, but a limited number of listeners may perceive an impact outside of the protected contour under certain conditions.
"Second-adjacent channel interference: NRSC tests indicated that some receivers (with performance similar to the NRSC analog automotive and portable receivers) should not experience an impact on performance due to second-adjacent channel hybrid FM IBOC interference, however a very limited number of receivers (with performance similar to the home hi-fi receiver used in the NRSC tests) might experience a negative impact for -30 to -40 dB (and more negative) D/U ratios."
Listeners should not perceive an impact on analog host station reception in the FM hybrid mode, the NRSC states in its report.
More data
The NRSC has yet to evaluate the system for unimpaired audio quality; it will do so when Ibiquity delivers more test results after integrating its Perceptual Audio Coding algorithm rather than MPEG-2 AAC, its former audio codec.
Questions remain about the system’s effect on analog FM subcarriers. Receiver results varied widely, sources said. As a result, Ibiquity, National Public Radio and the International Association of Audio Information Services have agreed to perform additional tests to determine how certain SCA receivers will perform after IBOC is implemented on host and adjacent channel stations. Results would be given to the FCC directly, sources said.
Smith said this latest effort to evaluate IBOC was the most comprehensive so far, from the sheer amount of data the group studied.
The evaluation working group, a subset of the DAB Subcommittee, reviewed lab and field test results of Ibiquity Digital Corp.’s FM IBOC in eight performance areas: audio quality, service area, durability, acquisition performance, auxiliary data capacity, behavior as signal degrades, stereo separation, flexibility and the IBOC signal’s impact on the host and neighboring stations.
The report is the result of efforts from several volunteers, led by Dr. Don Messer of the International Broadcasting Bureau.
The NRSC hoped to begin evaluating Ibiquity’s AM system at its next meeting in mid-December. It hopes to have that report completed by early March.
Also in November, the International Telecommunication Union initially endorsed Ibiquity’s FM system for use abroad and intended to put a draft recommendation for a vote before its 189-country membership.
In April, the ITU had endorsed Ibiquity’s AM system (below 30 mHz) for use in other countries along with the Digital Radio Mondiale AM system for long-wave, medium-wave and shortwave use.
The full NRSC report is available on its portion of NAB’s Web site, at www.nab.org/SciTech/Fmevalreportfinalfinal.pdf.
Digital radio broadcasting
In-band on-channel (IBOC) Digital Radio
IBOC systems are being developed in the USA as a way of allowing incumbent radio broadcasters to transmit in digital. Previously there were several systems being developed by different companies. These companies have all now merged in to a company named Ibiquity. Ibiquity is working on the development of anIBOC system for each of the AM and FM bands.
Test transmissions were conducted for both the AM and FM systems in Las Vegas during NAB 2001. Demonstrations of the system were available on request at the Ibiquity stand. Both the AM system and FM system seemed to work well. The audio quality of the FM IBOC system was excellent and did not fail at any time. However, it should be noted that the reception environment for the analog FM signal did not seem to be particularly challenging and that signal levels were good. The AM IBOC system also worked well. Unfortunately, the host AM station changed program formats from music to talk the week before NAB and was not transmitting very good audio quality on either the analog or IBOC service.
The digital audio coding system being used for Ibiquity has changed from using a system called AAC (adaptive audio coding) to a system called PAC (perceptual audio coding). In a demonstration at the Ibiquity stand of four different audio coding systems it was very difficult to tell the different systems apart. The main advantage of the PAC system appears to be that it is slightly more efficient.
The US National Radio Standards Committee (NRSC) is to commence evaluation of the FM system in June 2001. This evaluation work is expected to be complete late in 2001. Timing for the AM system seems to be behind the FM system by around three to six months. The FCC will then need to proceed with modifying its rules, before services can formally commence. A comment by an FCC representative indicated that they are very interested in the NRSC evaluation, and particularly in the extent to which IBOC is superior to analog services and its compatibility with existing services. The FCC commented that it wouldn't be able to do much until the testing is complete. The FCC is also planning to consider new spectrum options for digital radio as part of the new proposed rule making process.
According to Ibiquity's representatives, they have finished the development phase and are now focusing their efforts on regulatory issues and commercialisation of the system.
Given the timing and processes still to be undertaken, it would seem that the earliest there could be a commercial launch of the Ibiquity system in the US would be in about two years' time, perhaps coinciding with NAB 2003.
http://www.aba.gov.au/abanews/aba_update/articles/2001/jun01/nab2001.htm
==================================
A favorable evaluation was announced Nov. 29 by Ibiquity for its "In-Band, On-Channel" technology to support digital AM/FM radio. Ibiquity announced that NAB and CEA sponsored a National Radio Systems Committee that will recommend the FCC approve Ibiquity's IBOC system.
Currently, the consumer electronics companies involved with iBiquity in the aftermarket and as automotive receiver manufacturers are the following:
.....
Fujitsu Ten www.fujitsu-ten.co.jp/english/
Fujitsu Ten is one of Japan’s leading automotive components companies. Fujitsu Ten manufactures and sells mainly automobile related equipment, including audio-visual products, car electronic devices, mobile communications radios and intelligent transportation systems. The Fujitsu Ten head office and main plant are located in Kobe with additional plants and sales offices located throughout Japan. The company also has offices in the United States, Europe, Singapore, Philippines, China and Australia. .....
Ground Control to Major Tom Parts I, II and III or
e.digital's involvement w/ Digital/Satellite Radio.
Part I:
http://www.ragingbull.altavista.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=532737
PartII:
http://www.ragingbull.altavista.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=533793
Part III:
http://www.ragingbull.altavista.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=533975
Where's SDMI? Code to battle piracy is MIA
Feds seen losing patience over lack of a solution
SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) --Four years ago the record industry and some technology companies banded together to match wits in a combined effort to stamp out Internet music piracy.
Their goal: to usher in an age of secure digital songs wrapped in unbreakable code.
The Secure Digital Music Initiative was supposed to be just the medicine to marginalize the Napster phenomenon. Soon, there would be SDMI protected CDs and SDMI digital music downloads playing only on SDMI-compliant devices.
Failure would mean "the Internet will simply become a world where nothing happens -- where nothing has value," SDMI's director, Leonardo Chiariglione, said at the time. Chiariglione now works at Telecom Italia Labs.
Now SDMI is roadkill, outpaced by developments in digital technology and done in by the narrow interests of its own members -- record labels competing for dominance and music hardware companies impatient to get their products out to consumers.
In all, some 200 recording and technology companies that paid $20,000 in annual dues took part in SDMI's lengthy planning and specification design meetings. But many also ignored SDMI's long-term goals.
With music fans clamoring to listen to their illegally copied MP3 files on mobile devices, makers of the Rio, Nomad Jukebox and other digital music players weren't about to let the market slip by.
"This was the RIAA's attempt to reverse physics," says Jonathan Potter, director of the Digital Media Association, which represents some online media and technology companies. "And it was an attempt to use the cloak of technology development to really try to impose rules on the Internet and content owners."
Hackerproof?
For three years, SDMI members met in the U.S. and abroad, sharing ideas about how to digitally watermark audio files to make them hackerproof or cloak them in another piece of computer code that only SDMI compliant CD players would recognize.
But the market for MP3s and digital music overtook them.
As Napster foundered in court, Gnutella, Morpheus and a host of other file-sharing applications took its place. Tens of millions of people downloaded the programs, sharing MP3s to listen to at home and on the road.
SDMI wasn't even close to ready as millions of consumers took advantage of these "killer apps," says Talal Shamoon, who had a front row seat for SDMI's downfall.
A vice president of business development at InterTrust Technologies, a digital rights management company and early SDMI member, Shamoon said "SDMI may have been the wrong medicine for anything."
"I think the market really moved under people's feet," he said.
SDMI's final public embarrassment came in September 2000 when the group issued a "Hack SDMI" challenge to computer programmers around the globe. SDMI encoded and digitally watermarked some audio content and dared programmers to hack it.
Princeton professor Edward Felten and a few colleagues met the SDMI challenge in three weeks and were about to present a paper on how they did it when the Recording Industry Association of America threatened to sue.
The RIAA eventually backed off, with the association's general counsel later calling the letter a mistake. But the damage was done.
More to come
All five major music labels continue to work on copy protection of course. But competing digital rights management schemes are multiplying, and don't play well with each other.
Music downloads from the labels' online service pressplay don't work with software downloaded with RealNetwork's Musicnet subscription, and none of those downloads play in a Rio Player, Nomad Jukebox or iPod.
Many manufacturers say they plan to upgrade the software in their devices so the music players will recognize the protected content format -- as soon as someone invents one that consumers care to buy.
But such advances may make the players incompatible with today's digital music, leaving listeners with thousands of MP3s and no device to hear them on.
"Purely from a technological perspective and from a consumer electronics standpoint, it's very important to have a format that everybody can eat," Shamoon said.
For up-and-coming MP3 player companies like Bantam Interactive, deciding whether to support digital rights management may mean life or death in terms of consumer acceptance.
"I do not want to make any player which allows only to play copy-protected music," said Santosh Patel, Bantam's president.
He never joined SDMI, which was already on its last legs when Bantam was coming to market with its two players 1 1/2 years ago.
Winning consumers?
Patel wants his products to evolve to support future copy-protected music formats, while retaining the ability to play older unprotected MP3s.
"That way you support the technology, you support the security and eventually you phase out the unprotected material," Patel said.
Another organization appears poised to pick up where SDMI left off.
The newly formed Digital Media Device Association intends to develop specifications for digital entertainment on portable devices. The group has about 40 members who have been meeting monthly since January, but little else is known about the effort and its director, Tom White, refused to offer details.
Some in government appear to be losing patience with the lack of a solution to securing digital content.
Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, Democrat-South Carolina, has proposed a bill to require any "interactive digital device" sold in the United States to prevent users from making unauthorized copies of copyright material.
If the private sector doesn't agree on copy-protection methods within two years, the government would determine the standard.
The Digital Media Association's Potter opposes Hollings bill.
"We don't think the government has engineers that rival the private sector's," Potter said. "Nor do we think it's possible to confine consumers. You need to win consumers in the marketplace."
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Texas Instruments' New Programmable DSP Solution Offers Improved Performance for Digital Cameras
DALLAS (Oct. 23, 2001) -- Leveraging the latest in digital signal processor (DSP) technology, Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE: TXN) introduced the latest programmable DSP-based solution that enables faster operation with lower power consumption in digital cameras. Offering features that provide greater speed and design flexibility, the new DSP solution achieves performance increases of up to 100 percent and a reduction in power consumption of up to 25 percent over TI's previous-generation DSP solution. Digital cameras designed with the new platform will allow consumers to capture high-resolution still images and enjoy real-time PC video from the same device. The new TMS320DSC25 programmable DSP solution extends the performance and functionality of TI's successful TMS320DSC21 platform, providing system designers with the means to improve and differentiate their digital camera products. The new device supports the capture of still images at up to 3-megapixels in less than a second, and it encodes and decodes CIF resolution (352x288) MPEG-4 I+P frame video at 20 frames per second (fps). Additional power-down modes provide a reduction in overall system power consumption and prolonged battery life. The enhanced DSP subsystem enables higher imaging and video processing performance, while the preview engine, the addition of an external host interface and SD, Multi-media Card (MMC) and Memory Stick interfaces all make the DSC25 a more flexible solution for digital cameras, dual-purpose PC cameras and other multimedia applications. "The introduction of the DSC25 illustrates TI's commitment to the fast-growing digital imaging market," said Will Strauss, president of market research firm Forward Concepts. "The price, performance and programmability are very attractive features, but the ability to also handle Internet audio functions in addition to the flexible imaging capability expands its utility and overall value to the camera manufacturer." The DSC25 is manufactured using a 0.15-micron (SIA) CMOS process that improves speed and lowers power consumption over the DSC21. Combining TI's low power TMS320C54x™ DSP with an ARM7TDMI® RISC processor on a single device provides programming flexibility that allows developers to offer unique features in new systems, upgrade existing designs as standards evolve and create new products from existing hardware platforms by modifying software. Additionally, DSP programmability enables system developers to leverage their investment in hardware and software to get to market quickly and cost-effectively with new products. "TI has learned from the success of the DSC21 what customers need most for next-generation digital cameras," said Dr. Raj Talluri, Imaging business manager at Texas Instruments. "The increased performance, programming flexibility and low power consumption of the DSC25 will enable manufacturers to offer consumers higher quality images and a greater range of features in upcoming digital camera products." Additional enhanced features of the DSC25 include a digital liquid crystal display (LCD) interface and S-video output. An enhanced on screen display (OSD) provides more flexible, simplified graphical user interface (GUI) development for system designers with dedicated video, bitmap and cursor windows. An improved preview engine enhances preview quality with faster memory access and image resizing. Direct memory access (DMA) to external dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and an external host interface enhance flexibility for PC-related applications. TI's support features serve to make system development easier and speed time to market. Software modules will be available for all major video-imaging compression standards, including JPEG, motion-JPEG, MPEG, MPEG-4, H.263, as well as audio standards such as MP3 and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), as well as data communication standards such as USB and RS-232. In addition, the DSC25 is supported by TI's eXpressDSP™ Real-Time Software Technology, which includes the Code Composer Studio™ integrated development environment (IDE), the DSP/BIOS™ real-time kernel, the TMS320™ DSP Algorithm Standard for interoperability and reuse and the industry's largest base of third-party software modules. Pricing and Availability Samples of TI's DSC25 DSP solution are available now, with volume production currently scheduled for Spring 2002. Evaluation modules (EVMs) are expected to be available in the first quarter of 2002 to help camera OEMs begin development on new systems. The DSC25 solution in quantities of 100 thousand units or more is expected to be less than $20 each.
Programmable DSP Zooms In On Digital Camera Performance
By Mark Long -- e-inSITE, 10/24/2001
Texas Instruments (TI) has introduced a programmable DSP for digital camera applications that has been designed to enable faster operation at power consumption rates that are up to 25 percent lower than what TI's previous-generation DSP can achieve.
The new TMS320DSC25 programmable DSP platform has been designed to enable digital cameras to capture high-resolution still images well as enjoy real-time PC video from the same device. The DSC25 combines TI's low power TMS320C54x DSP with an ARM7TDMI RISC processor.
Manufactured using a 0.15-micron (SIA) CMOS process, the device supports the capture of still images at up to 3-megapixels in under one second, while encoding and decoding CIF resolution (352x288) MPEG-4 I+P video at 20 frames per second (fps). The device also features multiple power-down modes that have been designed to reduce power consumption and extend battery life. In addition, the enhanced DSP subsystem integrates a preview engine that enhances preview quality with faster memory access and image resizing, and an external host interface as well as SD, Multi-media Card (MMC) and Memory Stick interfaces.
The DSC25 includes a digital liquid crystal display (LCD) interface and S-video output. The enhanced on screen display (OSD) also reportedly provides a more flexible, simplified graphical user interface (GUI) development for system designers with dedicated video, bitmap and cursor windows. Direct memory access (DMA) to external dynamic random access memory (DRAM) is also on tap, together with an external host interface for enhancing PC-related applications.
TI intends to offer software modules for JPEG, motion-JPEG, MPEG, MPEG-4, H.263, as well as audio standards such as MP3 and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC). Data communication standards such as USB and RS-232 will also be supported.
Sampling right now, TI's DSC25 DSP is scheduled to reach volume production in the Spring of 2002 at a price of less than $20 each in 100K quantities.
TI’s Programmable DSP For Digital Cameras
Texas Instruments is now sampling its latest programmable DSP, which it says enables faster operation with lower power consumption in digital cameras and offers performance increases of up to 100 percent and a reduction in power consumption of up to 25 percent over its previous latest and greatest DSP. The TMS320DSC25 programmable DSP supports the capture of still images at up to 3-megapixels in less than a second, and encodes and decodes CIF resolution (352x288) MPEG-4 I+P frame video at 20 frames per second (fps). Additional power-down modes provide a reduction in overall system power consumption and prolonged battery life. The DSP adds an external host interface and SD, Multi-media Card (MMC) and Memory Stick interfaces. The DSC25 is manufactured using a 0.15-micron (SIA) CMOS process and features a digital liquid crystal display (LCD) interface and S-video output. An enhanced on screen display (OSD) provides a simplified graphical user interface (GUI) development environment for system designers with dedicated video, bitmap and cursor windows, and its improved preview engine offers faster memory access and image resizing (remember that we’re comparing it to its older sibling). Direct memory access (DMA) to external dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and an external host interface are provided for PC-related applications. TI says that software modules will be available for all major video-imaging compression standards, including JPEG, motion-JPEG, MPEG, MPEG-4, H.263, and audio standards like MP3 and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), as well as data communication standards including USB and RS-232. Samples of TI's DSC25 DSP solution are available now, with volume production currently scheduled for Spring 2002. Evaluation modules are expected to be available in the first quarter of 2002. In quantities of 100 thousand units or more, the DSC25 is expected to be priced at less than $20.
http://www.tomshardware.com/technews/technews-20011024.html.
TI Japan Announces New DSP Solution for DSC
Texas Instruments Japan recently announced the TMS320DSC25 (DSC25), the company's new DSP (Digital Signal Processor) solution for digital still cameras. Compared to its existing mainstream DSP for application in digital still cameras – the TMS32DSC21 (DSC21) – the DSC25 reduces power consumption by 25 percent and improves battery life. While it can capture high-resolution still images, the new chip can also process real-time video. With use of the DSC25, the camera manufacturers can achieve the capture of a 3-million pixel still image in less than one second, and undertake real-time compression/decompression at 20 frames per second of MPEG4 video for CIF (352 x 288) size images. The new device supports interfaces for the SD card, the MultiMedia Card, and the Memory Stick. TI Japan began sampling the new device on October 24, 2001, with mass production to kick off in spring of 2002. The price of the DSC25 is less than $20 for an order of 100,000 units. According to U.S. market research firm Forward Concept, Texas Instruments held a 44-percent share of the DSP market in 2000, followed by Lucent Technologies' 22.8 percent, and Motorola's 13.2 percent. [M. Robertson, Portelligent]
OEMs Select TI's Fully Software Programmable, High Performance DSP Solutions For Video and Imaging Applications
DALLAS (December 17, 2001) - Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE:TXN) today announced 150 video and imaging customer designs on the TMS320C6000(tm) digital signal processor (DSP) platform and the shipment of more than two million units of the TMS320DSCx DSP platform for portable video and imaging applications. Additionally, software developers have purchased more than 300 of TI's C6000(tm) DSP-based Imaging Developer's Kits (IDKs) in less than 12 months, and six new consumer electronics products have hit the shelves utilizing TI's DSCx solutions. See www.ti.com/sc/wdm1210
By providing video infrastructure and broadband video client customers with the DSP performance to maximize channel density within a power budget and by working with partners to bring next generation codecs to market, TI is enabling customers to get to market faster with new codecs based on TI's programmable DSP solutions, such as MPEG-4, Real Video and other embedded solutions. TI's DSP solutions are also making significant inroads into consumer applications, such as digital cameras, surveillance systems and digital media centers, in which OEMs need flexible multimedia decoder engines.
Comprehensive Offering for Client and Video Infrastructure Products
TI's comprehensive multimedia solutions offering simplifies the design process for video and imaging customers by providing access to the world's highest-performance DSPs and the codecs, partners, tools and technical information to make video and imaging development easy:
A variety of choices to meet specific digital media needs is provided with 12 devices available today in the TMS320C6000™ DSP platform
Video and imaging support is provided by the world's largest DSP third-party network with more than 500 participants, including Ingenient Technologies, Ateme and UB Video
Leadership digital media partners including Real Networks and On2 Technologies offer the codecs customers need optimized for TI's DSPs
Video and imaging based developer's kit (IDK) makes design easy
A robust development environment is accessible through the fully integrated eXpressDSP™ development tools and software, including the industry's most efficient C compiler and the royalty-free DSP/BIOS™ real-time scalable kernel
Video application expertise is accessible through specific video and imaging technical information including three new technical white papers, found at www.ti.com/sc/wdm1210
Libraries of optimized video and imaging functions accelerate product development
Because they provide maximum performance to support industry trends toward higher channel densities and low power requirements in enterprise and carrier-class video infrastructure systems, TI's programmable, high-performance C6000 DSPs are ideal for handling today's and tomorrow's imaging and video applications and are becoming ubiquitous in embedded video applications. Manufacturers of imaging and video products such as statistical multiplexors and broadband video routers can take advantage of the C6000 DSP's full programmability, which provides customers with the most flexible solution to keep pace with evolving standards and product functionalities. Some customers include Hewlett-Packard, Artel Video, Scopus Technologies, Mango and Adyoron.
System Integration for Portable Video and Imaging Applications
As 2001 comes to a close, TI has shipped more than two million units of the high performance, programmable DSCx platform, including the TMS320DSC21 and TMS320DSC24 DSP-based solutions. The DSC21, which is the first device of the DSCx family, is a single chip processor designed to enhance the functionality of digital cameras. Announced earlier this year, TI's DSC24 DSP solution enables high quality multimedia and real-time video in imaging Internet appliances, such as streaming media devices, eBooks, Webpads, snapshot photo printers and digital video camcorders. The recently announced TMS320DSC25, which is expected to ship in volume in spring 2002, continues the rate of innovation by achieving performance increases of up to 100 percent and a reduction in power consumption of up to 25 percent over the DSC21 DSP solution.
Some of the recently introduced products that utilize TI's DSCx solutions include Hewlett-Packard's PhotoSmart 715 digital camera, Konica's Digital Revio KD-200Z digital camera and Archos' Jukebox Multimedia, a handheld multimedia entertainment center combining an MP3 player and recorder, a photo album viewer, a digital still camera and a camcorder in one unit. In addition, TI's DSCx solutions are included in Panasonic's NV-MX1000 and NV-MX2500 digital video cameras which include digital still camera functionality, as well as Panasonic's NV-EX21, a digital video camera with detachable digital still camera and MPEG-4 digital video units.
"TI is committed to empowering customers to build differentiated, innovative video and imaging products," said Greg Delagi, vice president and general manager, worldwide digital signal processing, TI. "By leveraging the programmability, performance headroom and design flexibility of TI's DSP technologies, customers can build feature-rich video and imaging products with more functionality and higher channel density at a lower overall system cost."
DivXNetworks Announces Integration of DivX Video Technology to TI's Digital Imaging DSP-Based Solution
First Chip Port for Widely Used DivX(TM) Video Codec Will Enable
Range of DivX-Powered Consumer Electronics Devices
SAN DIEGO, April 30 /PRNewswire/ -- DivXNetworks, Inc. today announced the successful integration of the DivX(TM) video codec to the Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) digital signal processor (DSP)-based solution, the TMS320DSC25. The DSC25 DSP-based chip is the first embedded solution capable of playing back DivX video, which enables full-motion, high-quality video at 7-10 times greater compression than MPEG-2.
DivX-enabled TI DSC25 chips will support DivX playback on next-generation consumer electronics devices, including digital set-top boxes, handheld video players, next-generation DVD players and digital video cameras. The DSC25 is a single-chip, high-performance audio/visual image-processing engine containing all functions required for communication with external devices. A multimedia system-on-a-chip (SOC) solution, the DSC25 supports DivX playback at full video frame rate and frame size.
"A key ingredient in making video convergence a reality is the emergence of a robust embedded solution to power the next generation of multimedia devices that bridge the gap between the PC and the TV, and by enabling high-performance playback of widely popular DivX video, TI's DSC family is well-positioned to lead the convergence charge in the CE space," said Jordan Greenhall, CEO and co-founder of DivXNetworks, Inc. ( www.divxnetworks.com ). "Over the next six to eighteen months, we will see the roll-out of a variety of hardware devices capable of playing back DivX video, from handheld players to digital set-top boxes. The first port of DivX technology to a high-performance multimedia DSP-based solution such as the TI DSC25 is a major milestone toward that end."
"By working together with DivXNetworks to optimize the DSC25 for the high-quality playback of DivX video, we can maximize the value proposition we offer to our customers and partners," said Dr. Kun Shan Lin, VP and manager of TI's Imaging and Audio Group. "We are dedicated to providing a complete real world signal processing solution for high-performance digital video, and we believe the addition of DivX technology to the DSC25 will significantly increase the functionality of our multimedia DSP product line."
Hailed as a "revolutionary product" by Tom's Hardware Guide, DivX MPEG-4 compatible video compression technology has been downloaded over 50 million times. DivXNetworks recently announced a strategic partnership with e.Digital Corporation to design and develop DivX-powered consumer electronics devices, with the first device expected to be available by the end of the year. For more information on DivX technology, visit www.divxnetworks.com/products . To learn more about the TI DSC family of digital signal processors, visit www.ti.com/sc/digitalcamera .
About DivXNetworks
DivXNetworks is a leading technology company that enables the rapid proliferation of video content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks by combining the lightweight, ubiquitous access of the Internet with DVD-quality video performance. The company's approach is built upon the success of the DivX(TM) codec, a leading standard for MPEG-4 compatible video distribution with over 50 million users worldwide, and the DivX Open Video System(TM), a next-generation content delivery system that provides unsurpassed aggregation, promotion, and distribution of video content for mass markets. DivXNetworks is headquartered in San Diego, California, with a satellite office in Los Angeles. For more information about DivXNetworks, visit http://www.divxnetworks.com .
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Subject:TMS320DSC25 Texas Instruments has introduced a programmable-DSP-based solution that enables faster operation with lower power consumption in digital cameras.
Offering features that provide greater speed and design flexibility, the new DSP solution achieves performance increases of up to 100% and a reduction in power consumption of up to 25% over TI's previous-generation DSP solution.
Digital cameras designed with the new platform will allow consumers to capture high-resolution still images and enjoy real-time PC video from the same device.
The new TMS320DSC25 programmable DSP solution extends the performance and functionality of TI's successful TMS320DSC21 platform, providing system designers with the means to improve and differentiate their digital camera products.
The new device supports the capture of still images at up to 3Mpixel in less than a second, and it encodes and decodes CIF resolution (352 x 288) MPEG-4 I+P frame video at 20frame/s.
Additional power-down modes provide a reduction in overall system power consumption and prolonged battery life.
The enhanced DSP subsystem enables higher imaging and video processing performance, while the preview engine, the addition of an external host interface and SD, Multimedia Card (MMC) and Memory Stick interfaces all make the DSC25 a more flexible solution for digital cameras, dual-purpose PC cameras and other multimedia applications.
The DSC25 is manufactured using a 0.15-micron (SIA) CMOS process that improves speed and lowers power consumption over the DSC21.
Combining TI's low power TMS320C54x DSP with an ARM7TDMI RISC processor on a single device provides programming flexibility that allows developers to offer unique features in new systems, upgrade existing designs as standards evolve and create new products from existing hardware platforms by modifying software.
Additionally, DSP programmability enables system developers to leverage their investment in hardware and software to get to market quickly and cost-effectively with new products.
Additional enhanced features of the DSC25 include a digital LCD interface and S-video output.
An enhanced on screen display provides more flexible, simplified graphical user interface development for system designers with dedicated video, bitmap and cursor windows.
An improved preview engine enhances preview quality with faster memory access and image resizing.
Direct memory access to external DRAM and an external host interface enhance flexibility for PC-related applications.
TI's support features serve to make system development easier and speed time to market.
Software modules will be available for all major video-imaging compression standards, including JPEG, motion-JPEG, MPEG, MPEG-4, H.263, as well as audio standards such as MP3 and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), as well as datacommunications standards such as USB and RS-232.
In addition, the DSC25 is supported by TI's eXpressDSP real-time software technology, which includes the Code Composer Studio integrated development environment, the DSP/BIOS real-time kernel, the TMS320 DSP algorithm standard for interoperability and reuse and the industry's largest base of third-party software modules.
Samples of TI's DSC25 DSP solution are available now, with volume production currently scheduled for Spring 2002.
Evaluation modules are expected to be available in the first quarter of 2002 to help camera OEMs begin development on new systems.
The DSC25 solution in quantities of 100 thousand units or more is expected to be less than $20 each.
EDIG FAQ updated 4/26/02
-------------------- Posted 4/26/02 --------------------
Q: How dependent is e.Digital on DataPlay-enabled products for revenue?
A: We fully support DataPlay and have worked closely with them for more than a year. We have completed our Non-Recurring Engineering on DataPlay-enabled music player platforms and continue providing support for the manufacturing ramp-up of consumer products.
However, with any new technology such as DataPlay, the rate of success will depend on market acceptance and penetration. We believe that the backing of digital content providers such as major record labels will be the key to how quickly DataPlay becomes successful. While we will receive royalties on DataPlay-enabled products incorporating e.Digital technology, we do not expect these royalties to comprise a significant percentage of our revenue during calendar year 2002.
Q: When is the next e.Digital quarterly conference call and webcast?
A: Because we have a March 31 fiscal year end, our next regularly-scheduled conference call would not be until early July. We plan to hold an interim conference call and webcast before the end of May to provide investors, analysts, and shareholders with an update and revenue guidance. This will be in addition to our regular quarterly calls. The specific date and time will be announced and published on our web site before the event.
Our fully-audited annual financial report (Form 10-K) from Ernst & Young is scheduled to be filed before the end of June.
WOW, that was FAST!!!
From bostonredsox
PostID 184812 On Thursday, April 25, 2002 (EST) at 3:24:07 PM
Response To: bostonredsox PostID 183981
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two days after restocking the Treo10, it is out of stock AGAIN at goodguys.com
This is about the 5th time it has gone out of stock
Anyone care to venture a guess as to how big these reorders are????
bostonredsox
LSI Logic and iVAST Partner to Develop End-to-End MPEG-4 Products
Agreement to Result in MPEG-4 Encoding, Publishing and Decoding Solutions For Professional, Prosumer and Consumer Applications
MILPITAS, Calif., April 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- LSI Logic Corporation (NYSE: LSI - news) and iVAST Inc., a leading MPEG-4 interactive media platform developer, today announced they have signed an agreement to utilize iVAST's MPEG-4 Platform(TM) and LSI Logic's DoMiNo(TM) network media processor technology to enable MPEG-4 encoding, publishing and decoding solutions. The joint development effort will encompass a wide range of business opportunities, spanning professional, prosumer and consumer applications. Targeted devices include, video peripherals, video-on-demand enabled set-top boxes, and Internet-ready DVD players, digital televisions and digital video recorders. Leveraging the low bit rate and interactive capabilities of MPEG-4, the companies will offer a compelling set of content and service offerings that are cost-effective for device manufacturers and service providers.
``This new relationship represents a seminal event in the MPEG-4 industry -- just as the introduction of MPEG-2 encode and decode in the mid-1990's changed the face of television and movie distribution to homes,'' said Elliot Broadwin, CEO of iVAST. ``The development of MPEG-2 chips enabled whole new content distribution platforms, including DVDs as well as direct broadcast satellite and digital cable services; this partnership between iVAST and LSI Logic further changes the landscape of digital media distribution, enabling distribution of interactive, broadcast-quality video over physical media, broadcast networks and the Internet.''
LSI Logic is a recognized market leader in digital video codecs and has been a pioneer in deploying MPEG technology. The company's DoMiNo architecture delivers advanced MPEG-4 compression technology, enabling high-quality, full-screen video up to 1.5Mbps, coupled with built-in AAC, MP3 and CELP audio solutions on a single device. The iVAST MPEG-4 Platform encompasses a full range of products to create, deliver and play back MPEG-4 rich media content, with tools for content creation; software MPEG-4 encode and decode; a server for on-demand streaming; and a feature-rich MPEG-4-compliant media engine that presents interactive scenes and objects. When integrated, these technologies can support a full range of MPEG-4 media presentations, including advanced audio, video, graphics and animation, allowing the user to have a fully interactive experience through low bit-rate applications.
``We are very excited about our collaboration with iVAST, which has established itself as a leading provider of MPEG-4 tools for major Hollywood studios and content creators,'' said Bob Saffari, senior director of advanced video products marketing and applications engineering at LSI Logic. ``By leveraging our combined experience, we'll be able to produce the highest MPEG-4 video quality to satisfy all the applications we're addressing in the professional, prosumer and consumer markets. Together, we're looking at the near- and long-term opportunities and implementing on those applications that are suited for each market and geography.''
About LSI Logic Corporation
LSI Logic Corporation is a leading designer and manufacturer of communications, consumer and storage semiconductors for applications that access, interconnect and store data, voice and video. In addition, the company supplies storage network solutions for the enterprise. LSI Logic is headquartered at 1551 McCarthy Boulevard, Milpitas, CA 95035, 866-574-5741 (within U.S.), 408-954-3108 (outside U.S.), http://www.lsilogic.com .
About iVAST, Inc.
iVAST is the world leader in end-to-end MPEG-4 solutions. The iVAST MPEG-4 platform builds on the success of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 open standards by revolutionizing the distribution of interactive audio/video content across broadband and broadcast networks. For the entertainment, enterprise and education markets, iVAST generates new business opportunities through the secure delivery of digital media, worldwide. iVAST is headquartered in Santa Clara, California and offers creative services through its Studio in Los Angeles. For more information, please visit www.ivast.com.
Notes to Editor:
1. All LSI Logic news releases (financial, acquisitions, manufacturing,
products, technology etc.) are issued exclusively by PR Newswire and
are immediately thereafter posted on the company's external website,
http://www.lsilogic.com .
2. The LSI Logic logo and DoMiNo are trademarks or registered trademarks
of LSI Logic Corporation.
3. All other brand or product names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective companies.
4. Please do not assign a Reader Service number to this release.
SOURCE: LSI Logic Corporation
Programmable Logic Facilitates Connectivity for Digital Video Applications
The market for digital video has grown tremendously over the past few years. In the past digital video files could be created, and stored but not shared in the robust, transparent manner that users expected and received for other applications. With the convergence of PC applications and other electronics appliances, the need for transparent and high bandwidth connectivity is becoming more and more a necessity.
There are several solutions available today that provide interconnectivity between different devices, but there is such a mix and match of standards being used by manufacturers in the market today depending on the end application and varying customer requirements. Interfacing between components on a board and between different products is a critical bottleneck that needs to be overcome for digital video. High-speed access is enabled by interfaces such as USB 2.0, IEEE 1394, DVI, LVDS and PCI for internal and external connectivity. Programmable logic offers product manufacturers with the right features that are ideally suited to facilitating connectivity solutions for high-bandwidth digital video transmissions.
USB
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a bus standard that was originally specified in 1995. The major goal of USB is to define an expansion bus that makes it easy to add peripherals to a PC. USB-compliant devices can be plugged in and simply turned on without the need of shutting down and restarting devices.
USB is playing a key role in fast growing consumer areas: digital imaging, PC telephony, and multimedia games. The presence of USB in most new PCs, and its plug-and-play capability, means that PCs and peripherals (such as CD-ROM drives, tape and floppy drives, scanners, printers, digital cameras, etc) will automatically configure and work together, with a high degree of reliability. USB distributes power to all connected devices and allows bi-directional data transfer, making it a natural choice for connecting PC-centric information appliances across the home. USB opens the door to new levels of innovation and ease of use for input devices, such as the new generation of "force-feedback" digital joysticks. There are also brand new opportunities for all types of peripherals from printers to scanners to high speed connections such as Ethernet, DSL, cable, and satellite communications.
USB version 1.1 has gained tremendous success in the marketplace, with most PC and peripheral vendors worldwide developing products based on this specification. USB supports two high-speed data transfer protocols: isochronous and asynchronous. Isochronous connections from the PC USB port to the peripherals such as scanners, video devices, digital cameras and printers, supports data transfers at a guaranteed, fixed rate of delivery of 12Mbps. The slower asynchronous protocol is used to communicate with peripherals such as keyboards and mice at 1.5Mbps.
These data rates of up to 12Mbps are sufficient for low-speed to medium-speed peripherals. USB data rates also accommodate a whole new generation of peripherals, including MPEG-2 video-based products, data gloves, and digitizers. However, USB 1.1 bandwidths do not fill the void for many evolving high-bandwidth digital video applications.
Programmable Logic-Based USB Solutions
USB 2.0 is based on the same architecture as USB 1.1, but the next generation specification extends the bandwidth and hence increases the connection speeds between the PCs and the peripherals. USB 2.0 has over 40 times the data rate as USB 1.1 increasing data rates from 12Mbps to 480Mbps respectively, and hence extending its capabilities. USB 2.0 will be forward and backward compatible with current USB systems and peripherals and specifies the use of the same cables and connectors as the USB 1.1 standard.
The higher bandwidth will support the most demanding PC applications where multiple high-speed peripherals will be running simultaneously.
The success of USB has brought about a plethora of USB solutions to the market. A multitude of commodity chipsets for USB 1.1 are available today, however that is not the case with USB 2.0. The still evolving nature of the USB 2.0 makes a programmable solution ideal. Fig 1 shows a USB 2.0 core implementation.
The link controller block can be implemented in an FPGA, and with the FPGAs inherent flexible nature can be interfaced to any backend interface as required by a given end application. In addition, the reprogrammable serial interface engine (SiE), which is the bridge between the USB 2.0 PHY and function controller, allows designs to be future-proofed in case the interface needs modification due to an update in the specification.
Fig 2 shows USB 2.0 to SCSI example, a desirable solution for the mass storage market. As shown in the figure, due to its programmable nature the design is provisioned to support IDE and ATA interfaces on the same PCB along with SCSI. A low cost FPGA solution extends traditional FPGA benefits to the cost sensitive USB 2.0 market providing time-to-market, flexibility and the ability to bridge disparate protocols.
IEEE 1394
IEEE 1394 provides a digital interface to integrate entertainment, communication, and computing electronics into consumer multimedia. IEEE 1394 is a hardware and software standard for transporting data at 100, 200 or 400Mbps. With IEEE 1394 there is no need to convert digital data into analog and tolerate a loss of data integrity. In addition, IEEE 1394 devices are hot-pluggable and scalable, i.e. there is the ability to mix and match devices that operate at 100, 200, or 400Mbps.
The IEEE 1394 topology supports daisy chaining and branching for true peer-to-peer communication. With these features it has become the audio/video digital interface of choice. For most audio/video stream isochronous transfers are the best choice for sending time-critical and error-tolerant data. If the data is not error-tolerant, such as a disk drive then asynchronous transfers are preferable.
The IEEE 1394 multimedia connection enables simple, low-cost, high-bandwidth isochronous (real-time) data interfacing between PCs, peripherals, and a plethora of consumer electronics products such as camcorders, VCRs, printers, TVs, gaming consoles, digital cameras, video editing equipment and so on. A variant of IEEE 1394, IEEE 1394b is a significant enhancement to the basic 1394 specification that enables speed increases to 3.2Gbps and supports distances of 100m on optical fiber. This revision is a legitimate contender for the mass storage market.
To protect 1394 streams from piracy, Digital Transmission Content Protection (DTCP), an encryption scheme has been developed. Streams up to 400Mbps can be encrypted, which is more than adequate for compressed MPEG-2, however not sufficient for uncompressed HD video, which is addressed by DVI and HDCP as will be discussed later.
Programmable Solutions for IEEE 1394
Home Audio Video Interoperability (HAVi) is a digital audio/video networking initiative that provides a home networking software specification for seamless interoperability among home entertainment products, irrespective of their manufacturer.
Eight of the world's leading consumer electronics manufacturers have actually developed a standard that will bring "plug and enjoy" convenience and easy interoperability to all new digital home devices. IEEE 1394 (i.LINK or FireWire) has been chosen as the interconnection medium because it has more than enough capacity to simultaneously carry multiple digital audio and video streams around the house, and provides support for digital copy protection.
Programmable logic solutions are ideal for implementing the link layer functionality as shown in Fig 3. Link layer controllers are different for different end applications. Programmable logic with its inherent programmable nature allows itself to be modified to suit the application that it is being targeted for. In addition, the ability to customize the backend interface for the desired end application is another compelling reason for a programmable logic based solution. As shown in Fig 3, the solution could be a simple IEEE 1394 link layer to PCI solution or it could just as easily be tweaked to provide a PCMCIA, Cardbus, MiniPCI, or any other interface required to fit the bill of the overall system.
Coexistence of USB, IEEE 1394
USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394, while offer similar data rates primarily differ in terms of application focus. The USB 2.0 Promoter Group expects USB 2.0 to be the preferred connection for most PC peripherals, whereas IEEE 1394's primary target is audio/visual consumer electronic devices such as digital camcorders, digital VCRs, DVDs, and digital TVs. One of the major differences is that USB requires a CPU to perform bus master functions whereas IEEE 1394 is peer-to-peer and hence does not need a master device. However, both USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 are expected to coexist on many consumer systems in the future.
Digital video interface (DVI) is a one-way point-to-point digital interface to send uncompressed streams. It is an interface that has gained rapid popularity to send digital graphics sources to digital displays such as plasma displays and flat panel LCDs. It removes an unnecessary analog-digital-analog conversion step that is required by current methods and allows sending a pure digital signal to display. DVI is based off transition minimized differential signalling (TMDS) and was developed by the Digital Display Working Group (DDWG).
DVI was designed to carry sustained HDTV data rate without interruption. For example, a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution 24-bit signal at 30 frames per second requires a 1.49Gbps link. DVI's single link can distribute video data at 4.9Gbps and a double link can support up 9.9Gbps. DVI-based applications are not just limited to HDTV, but also extend to set-top boxes, DVD players, video conferencing, professional audio/video equipment; essentially anything requiring a high-definition, high-quality display.
Programmable Solutions for DVI
Out of the needs for DVI outputs from being copied, High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) has evolved. DVI with HDCP provides a secure digital link from video source to display and has been endorsed by the major movie studios including Fox, Universal, Warner Bros. and Disney to protect rights of the creators of digital content.
DVI and IEEE 1394 each have their place in the market. Whereas DVI is suitable for uncompressed digital video, IEEE 1394 is suited for the distribution on compressed (MPEG-2) digital video. Most digital content received at home from DVD, satellite or cable is based on MPEG-2 streams. In addition, IEEE 1394 is a two-way high-speed interface capable of sending command and control protocols that enable devices to both broadcast and record data as opposed to a one-way point-to-point interface that DVI supports. Though all this at lower bandwidth links than DVI.
LVDS
Low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) as the name suggests is a differential interconnectivity standard. It uses a low voltage swing of approximately 350mV to communicate over a pair of traces on a PCB or cable. LVDS was primarily used with laptop PCs initially and is now widely used across digital video applications, telecom and networking, and for system interconnectivity in general across many applications.
As digital TV, digital cameras and camcorders are fueling the consumer demand for high-quality video that offers a realistic visual experience, moving high-bandwidth digital video data within these appliances and between them is a very challenging task. LVDS rises up to the challenge of handling high performance video data well over 400Mbps and in addition offers superior immunity to noise, low power, and all at a low cost.
Differential data can be transmitted at these rates using inexpensive connectors and cables. LVDS provides robust signaling for high-speed data transmission between chassis, boards, and peripherals using standard ribbon cables. Point-to-point LVDS signaling is possible at speeds of up to 622Mbps and beyond.
There are low-cost FPGA solutions in the market today that support LVDS capability for consumer applications. The integration of high performance LVDS I/O in low-cost FPGAs means that it can easily support real-time image processing and support transfer of data well in excess of typical HDTV rates. Capable of MPEG-2 co-processing, color space conversion, image enhancement, graphics control, and interfacing to multiple memory types, FPGAs are ideal for digital displays that use LVDS for an interconnectivity solution. LVDS is also just as well suited as an intra-system connectivity solution to transfer high-bandwidth video content between video chips.
PCI
The Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) local bus is one of the most successful standards in history, serving as the main general-purpose bus in virtually every desktop computer and an ever growing number of embedded systems. The flexibility of PCI has allowed it keep pace with tremendous increases in CPU performance and data capacity, while making it suitable for applications such as laptops, servers, industrial computers, communication switches, routers, instrumentation and digital video.
PCI graphics and video cards have been prevalent in PC systems for years now. In general, PCI-based systems are the norm in video applications where high performance is a requirement. PCI is widely used for internal connectivity within advanced set-top boxes to add on cards for high performance copiers, graphics accelerators, and frame grabbers.
Advanced Graphics Port (AGP) is a variation of PCI, which was designed to remove major load from the PCI bus and improve graphics performance, especially for 3D rendering. It provides a point-to-point graphics bus to link graphics engine with main memory. It provides higher throughput, as it is able to support long bursts of data and little overhead. Different speeds of AGP support 266 Mbytes/s all the way up to 2.1 Gbytes/s for AGP 8x running at 533MHz clock speeds.
Programmable Solutions for PCI
PCI is a significant design challenge: the stringent electrical, functional and timing specifications are difficult to meet in any technology and the standard continues to evolve to meet the dynamic needs of the industry. One needs a flexible PCI solution that will meet both current and future requirements, while guaranteeing full PCI compliance with no limitations on performance or functionality.
Both 32-bit and 64-bit programmable PCI solutions are available today. These designs offer flexibility and a cost-effective solution for a fully compliant, high-performance PCI systems. The customizable nature of these PCI solutions allows variations of PCI such as CompactPCI, PMC, Cardbus, PCMCIA, and AGP, etc, to all be implemented for the same FPGA technology.
There is no one clear winner for the connectivity solution to address the digital video market. Each standard has its own benefits and hence a niche that it addresses. Each one of the high-bandwidth connectivity solutions is continuously evolving, proving the need for systems to be flexible in nature. Programmable logic-based connectivity solutions for digital video applications available today offer this and more. These solutions offer traditional benefits of programmable logic including accelerated time-to-market, flexibility, longer time-in-market and risk aversion, all this at cost competitive price points.
by Mamoon Hamid, System Architect, Strategic Solutions, Xilinx, Inc, USA
(April 2002 Issue, Nikkei Electronics Asia)
Toshiba Focuses on Mobile Devices
Toshiba Corp of Japan is now placing keen development emphasis on mobile devices and audio-visual (AV) equipment. "We're going to ship products this year --lots of products," said Tetsuya Mizoguchi, president and CEO of Toshiba Corp's Mobile Communications Company.
Methanol Design
In the area of fuel cells for mobile devices, Toshiba demonstrated its "GENIO e" personal digital assistant (PDA) (see Fig). This was the first time that the firm had shown its prototype in operation. Similar fuel cells are also under development at NEC Corp and Hitachi Ltd, both of Japan, but there are few reports of any designs offering an output capable of driving a PDA for a specific period of time. Toshiba's Mizoguchi believes that "2005 is too late" for commercialization, and plans to ship as soon as possible.
The prototype fuel cell is a direct methanol design, where the fuel electrode is directly immersed in a methanol/water fuel mixture. A 10ml fill of methanol generates electricity for two to three hours. Output is about 4V, but an internal voltage booster is used to boost fuel cell voltage of 2V.
Power density is high, at 30mW/cm2, and the cell is capable of supplying a constant average power of 5W. The power density is increased by using a pump to disperse the methanol/water fuel mixture onto the electrode while spraying.
The device has a tank for a 98% concentration of methanol, and a separate water tank. A solution of 3-5% methanol is created internally and pumped to the fuel electrode. A resin board with fluid channels on the surface is used to ensure uniform dispersal of the fuel mixture over the entire electrode.
The electrode material uses a proprietary catalyst developed by Toshiba. Normally these catalysts are Pt-based with Ru, but Toshiba has modified both the component ratios and additional new materials.
The fuel cell is capable of outputting a constant current for a long period of time, but is ill-suited to quickly producing the large currents needed to start up personal computers (PC), for example. This is why the PDA internal Li-polymer rechargeable batteries are used to start up the PDA. As one development engineer said, "When we actually commercialize this, we'll have to add some sort of auxiliary power source, maybe a double-layer capacitor."
Perpendicular Recording
A hard disk drive (HDD) using perpendicular magnetic recording has been prototyped for use in notebook PCs, and was demonstrated for the first time in a commercial PC. The HDD areal recording density is 35 Gbits/inch2. The drive has a single 2.5-inch platter and two heads, with a capacity of 20 Gbytes.
Toshiba has already prototyped a model with an areal recording density of 52 Gbits/inch2, also with one platter and two heads, for a capacity of 30 Gbytes. Both designs use single recording heads with high saturation-magnetic flux density, and giant magnetoresistive (GMR) heads for playback. The media is a two-recording layer design made for perpendicular recording, with playback voltage said to be double that of the conventional longitudinal recording scheme.
Information about product specifications and expected shipping dates has not been released, but according to a source in development, "We are now evaluating reliability under various temperature and magnetic field conditions. Evaluations are being made of the assembled HDD, not of individual components."
When the limits of longitudinal magnetic recording are reached to areal recording density of 100 Gbits/inch2, the firm will commercialize the new drives. If the pace of increase in areal recording density remains as it is, this means some time in 2003.
NEC, KDDI, Japan Telecom, Matsushita to Form Large ISP Group
April 24, 2002 (TOKYO) -- NEC Corp., KDDI Corp., Japan Telecom Co., Ltd. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. said they would establish an organization to standardize broadband services, tentatively called Mega Consortium.
Kenji Yoshiyama,
associate senior vice president of
NEC Solutions
At a press conference, Kenji Yoshiyama, associate senior vice president of NEC Solutions Company, revealed the consortium's objective. He said: "An Internet service provider (ISP) will not survive without offering high value-added services to the market. The consortium that we will form is the foundation to bring about such new services."
The new ISP group will have as many as 10 million users altogether after the four ISPs are merged. They are NEC's BIGLOBE, KDDI's DION, Japan Telecom's ODN and Matsushita's hi-ho.
Currently, Fujitsu Ltd.'s @nifty with 5.18 million members (as of the end of March 2002) is Japan's biggest ISP, but the new ISP will have about twice that number.
"Through the Mega Consortium, specifications of services will be more standardized, allowing more users to communicate among them by means of such services as IP telephones and/or instant messengers," Yoshiyama said.
ISPs are forced to make more investments to offer broadband services to the users while they are confronted with severe price competition. "One of the merits of establishing the consortium will be greater efficiency in investments because we will be able to leverage each other's backbone infrastructure," said Yoshiyama. "We will also be able to provide our users with a wider variety of contents, which we can purchase jointly."
The consortium is planning to start working out specific activities and services in June. But according to Yoshiyama, "we expect a trial service to start in the fall and the general availability of services on a commercial basis to begin next spring or later."
The participating companies will intend to invite other ISPs and cable television providers as well. Yoshiyama also said, "some ISPs of the NTT group are considering joining the consortium."
(Takatomo Suzuki, Staff Editor, Nikkei Computer)
Digital Internet Video (DivX)
'Borrowing' from Mp3 to Mpeg-4 ... by Aaron Stanton
We live in an era of change and controversy. Each new day brings with it a new technology, and each new technology brings with it a new set of legal and social worries. The largest of these are ethical, raising questions with multiple answers, questions about what is right and wrong. The Mp3 format, for example, is a popular technology that forces average citizens to reevaluate our definition of theft. Answers to these questions will continue to rewrite the very fabric of legal copyright and intellectual property laws. But as Napster moves towards an apparent peace with the music industry, many are beginning to wonder what the next great challenge will be.
You Heard It, Now You See It
The answer lies, as it so often does, in the Internet underground, where a new file format is posed to breathe new life onto the embers of the copyright debate. Mpeg-4 files, a relative of the Mp3 format, stand capable of doing to movies what Mp3 did to music. And they are already well entrenched with the tech savvy and pirating communities, the same people who gave shelter to the Mp3 at its birth before Napster appeared. Only now it's an entirely different ballgame, and the impact may be completely different.
Digital Internet Video (DivX) or other equivalent formats based on Mpeg-4 technology allow a file small enough to be burned to a CD, or downloaded off the Internet, to display full-screen, high quality video on an average computer monitor. When combined with Mp3-style audio (which many past formats were unable to do), DivX is capable of producing a full length, near DVD quality movie with full fidelity stereo sound in a file less than 600 megabytes. At that size, an average user with a DSL Internet connection can download two movies a night and burn them the next morning at less than 50 cents a CD.
Not the Dead DIVX DVD
Let's clear up one major point of confusion: DivX technology is in no way related to the hugely unpopular, failed DIVX DVD rental program released by Circuit City in 1998 and discontinued in June of 1999. With all these acronyms, pay attention to the capitalization: it does make a difference. While DIVX (the Circuit City one - all caps) was indeed a video format that competed on the open market with DVD, it held little of the potential of the Mpeg-4. The Circuit City DIVX was a way of delivering information as a type of video rental, but the latest DivX actually changes the quality of the product being delivered.
Quality King
At the excellent quality-to-size ratio that Mpeg-4 based technologies such as DivX allow, these are arguably the best current video formats available.
To see for yourself a format comparable in size and quality to DivX, look at the samples Microsoft totes of their own Mpeg-4 based format on their Windows Media 8 homepage. Since many believe that the DivX format originally came from a hacked version of Microsoft's Mpeg-4 codec, it seems fitting that they are one of the first companies to release a commercial product based upon the Mpeg-4 format. Samples are available in varying qualities at: http://www.m icrosoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/WM8/video.asp. The quality of the sample compressed at 750 kbps is comparable to that of the DivX full-length movies currently available on the Internet underground. Mpeg-4 based technology is capable of displaying an average length movie at that quality from a file between 550 and 650 megabytes each in length.
Swimming Up Mainstream
The origin of the DivX format, arguably the most popular Mpeg-4 codec currently available, is an issue subject to its own controversy. As stated earlier, many believe that DivX is merely a hacked version of Microsoft's Mpeg-4 codec. Whether this is true or not, alternatives to DivX claiming to have been developed from scratch (and thus legally) have already begun to appear. Corporations such as DivXNetworks, one of the forefathers of the DivX-style formats, have already stepped forward to help legitimize and mainstream this technology.
DivX still has many obstacles to overcome before it can take up the legacy left by the format that changed the music world. With a much heftier basic file size than its smaller cousin, and without a Napster equivalent, can DivX truly cause as much trouble, and reach the same popularity, as the Mp3? The answer to that lies partially in the differences between the way the music and the motion picture industries operate, and partially in the properties of the DivX format itself.
The most obvious roadblock to the Mpeg-4 becoming as mainstream as the Mp3 is the lack of a Napster movie equivalent. Napster allowes the average user to easily locate and download Mp3 files without a great deal of technical knowledge or sophistication. This made Mp3 open to anyone with an Internet connection, and that, combined with the popular culture of music, pushed it into the limelight.
Online Trading
However, programs such as Gnutella already allow files besides Mp3s to be traded online, and this includes DivX. While these programs are not yet as popular as Napster, their development, and consequently the development of a DivX Napster equivalent, is virtually guaranteed to continue. As it stands now, DivX is well known in many IRC and other communities. However, many of these do not rely on the central server technology that allows Napster's content to be controlled by the parent company. This makes them very difficult to control. With such a firm hold within the online community, DivX now stands with the same foothold to leap into stardom as the Mp3 had before Napster.
The sheer size of a DivX movie, 600 megabytes on average, is another deterrent to the possibility of DivX pirating achieving high popularity. Even with the growing numbers of high speed Internet connections available to households, a DivX movie can take several hours to download, as opposed to an Mp3, which takes minutes. However, as such communities as Gnutella and IRC have shown, many users are not daunted by the time involved. In fact, recent reports suggest that the rate of adaptation of users to DivX is becoming even greater than that of its Mp3 cousin.
You've Seen It Once. . .
The question then becomes not only how many people will take the time necessary to download a DivX file, but also how many people will then be around to watch it. Not only does the movie industry operate differently from the music industry, but we watch movies differently than we listen to music.
The size of the impact of free and easy access of pirated movies being available to the population at large may hinge on those differences. Where music is listened to over and over, movies are watched a limited number of times. This can be seen in people's willingness to pay ten dollars to see a movie when it is first released in the theater, yet only four dollars in the video store, and only a dollar for old releases. Every movie watcher knows the experience of passing up a movie on the shelves of a rental store because they've already seen it. A movie loses value to an individual each time it is viewed.
For this reason, DivX stands to do more damage to the movie industry than Napster did to the music industry. Because of the time-release schedules on which movies are circulated, motion pictures that are not yet available on the big screen often appear online, primed, proper, and ready for download weeks before their scheduled release. The Academy Award winning film, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," for example, was available online nearly a month before its appearance in theaters in the United States.
Furthermore, whereas listening to recorded music is often a solitary activity, movie watching is a social event in the U.S. Friends gather to watch a single rented, borrowed, or downloaded video. If the Mpeg-4 inherits even a little of the popularity of its audio cousin, a single DivX downloaded from the Internet and burned to a CD may reach more eyes, and do more damage, per download than the Mp3 ever did.
Whether or not the average person will ever reach the point of seeking movies online for free instead of going to the theater or renting them from the video store is questionable. With access to movies that are not yet available elsewhere, though, and the improvement of Napster-like sharing programs, DivX may yet offer a tempting service to a wide audience.
Dreaming Of Better Streaming
The real issue behind DivX, however, may be its high visual quality.The Mpeg-4 may also represent a gigantic step forward towards developing the ever-elusive high quality streaming technology that has been sought after by companies like Microsoft, Apple, and RealNetworks.
The concept of watching TV on your computer over the Internet has been around nearly from the beginning, and the hunt for formats capable of streaming video with a high enough quality to compete with the television has been on for some time. With the arrival of the Mpeg-4, perhaps a new light is shining on an industry which up until now has been unable to capture a mainstream audience. Already Microsoft has samples of near VHS quality streams on their Windows Media 8 website, and DivXNetworks recently released a streaming technology of their own. Full-length movies based on streams of varying quality are already legitimately available.
Whether looked upon as a pirate's tool for stealing from legitimate businesses, or as an exciting technology emerging in the forefronts of the motion picture industry, there is little doubt that the Mpeg-4 format has the features necessary to prove controversial. The next few months will show whether or not DivX is capable of reaching a large scale audience. We'll also soon see how the affected industries will react to what they surely will see as gross copyright violations. With no obvious target such as Napster for denouncers to attack, future legislation and copyright violation tactics could take many forms.
If you're not already watching videos on your computer, you might want to pop some popcorn and get ready to watch the debate. What do you think constitutes theft and ownership? And what role does technology play in citizenship as well as in the marketplace? Stay tuned: the action has just begun!
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Aaron Stanton currently lives in Moscow, Idaho, wasting his hours writing for GamesFirst.com, a PC/Console game review site based at the University of Idaho. His experiences range from computer programing and web design to writing and teaching. He has worked on DNA research projects with INEEL and special design projects overseas while simultaneously making the best of his writing addiction. Catch him while you can at stanton@dreamwithme.net
Goodbye DivX Community
BetaBoy
Project Mayo
Posted: 2002-02-27 16:52
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As my two year anniversary with DivX and my one year anniversary with DivXNetworks has just come to pass. As of today I will no longer be a part of the DivXNetworks company.
For those that know my past and what had brought me to DivXNetworks was my founding of MyDivX.com which then merged into and became the basis for the current DivX.com that you see today. I am proud of that fact and leave knowing that we are now one of the webs leading communities with millions of people visiting the site every month.
What I have had the pleasure of, is what you all don't see behind the scenes. The work and dedication from the DARC team developers and their commitment and vision to produce the best possible video codec available today is commendable. It has been a privilege to work with those people.
I leave knowing the fact that the DivXNetworks technology is well positioned for the future. At its core is the MPEG-4 compliant DivX video codec. For those that still doubt the validity of the technology and actually how good it is. All you need to do is look at recent joint announcements by Fraunhofer, Sigma Designs and DivX 5.0 to quell those doubts.
I would personally like to thank all the people here at ProjectMayo. From the Beta testers, to the coders to the users... The dedication and vision that you all have is commendable.
On a more personal note: Marc and Pedro... you guys are some of the most talented coders I know. If it were not for your hard work there would be no 'Pocket DivX Player' or 'Dreamcast DivX Player' period.
A promise that I have made to myself is that I will not be leaving the community behind that I helped to form. I will still post here on ProjectMayo on occasion and will field an occasional question. I also still plan on assisting Marc with the DCDivX Player Project.
As far as my future plans... I am working on being a part of a much larger community from which DivX feeds from and is a part of. I will soon make an announcement on this.
I am proud to have been associated with the DivX Codec and some of the people that created it from the very beginning. I thank you all for your support, patience, friendship and understanding. I hope I have helped some of you learn, as I know I have learned much from all of you in the past two years.
God Bless-
Dan "BetaBoy" Marlin
DivX.com Community Leader
June 15, 2000 > Multimedia Developer
Clarifying the Muddied Waters of Digital Media Distribution
By Steve McCannell
The dialog regarding digital media in the past year has been primarily focused on the rollercoaster ride involving Napster and the RIAA, but there are still many facets of the future of online digital media distribution that have not been accounted for. From alternative file-sharing programs, to DeCSS code, to an increasing amount of users on broadband connections; the pieces of the puzzle are increasing without a clear picture as to how they will all work together (or against each other). To help clarify the situation, let's take a look at the many components clouding our future.
The Post-Napster World
Napster has been in an interesting quandary over the last few months: they've needed more time in order to keep the courts happy while still trying to hold on to the majority of their users. Unfortunately for Napster, the company's subscription service is months away from launch, and the filters had to be put into place before Napster would've liked them to be. Since Napster has become virtually useless for the majority of its users, those users have since jumped ship to a number of other file-sharing alternatives, such as LimeWire, BearShare, Freenet, KaZaA, and so on.
The next phase of online music distribution will prove to be an interesting one. Three major subscription services are being launched this summer, and right now each plans to launch with only a limited amount of music available to their subscribers. Napster2 looks ready to launch within a couple months, consisting of artists signed onto Bertlesmann and its affiliates. Later this summer we'll see the launch of MusicNet, which includes the partnership of RealNetworks, AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann, and EMI. Sony and Universal in turn are launching their own separate service, dubbed pressplay, later this year (and will be featured on Yahoo). Each service has extended an offer to the other labels to join with them, and each has snubbed the idea so far. Microsoft might get a hand in here also, as the company is currently discussing antipiracy measures that Napster can take (where Microsoft will probably push for Napster to use the Windows Media Format for its service), and look to take the reigns from MP3 as the format of choice.
Sounds like a case of too many chiefs and not enough indians. Because the big five record labels can't agree to team up and create a joint-venture music site, customers will not pay a subscription fee to a site when they can't have access to every label's catalog like they could using Napster.
Another problem could be that these sites aren't Napster-esque enough. The Napster model worked for three reasons: distribution costs were pushed to the ISPs, subscribers acted as the content supplying hubs (offering up valuable disk space on their own computers), and the service made users feel like active participants within a community. MusicNet and pressplay are both looking to launch music portal sites—not P2P applications—where the company will have to supply the servers and disk space, pay for distribution costs, and so on, plus their users won't really get that sense of community.
Another factor in the puzzle is the fact that each site will push their own format under their own rules, threatening the ability to burn your downloads to an audio CD, or allowing for a limited amount of playbacks. We've become accustomed to our MP3s, only time will tell if the public will accept yet another format that protects the content provider but doesn't do much for the consumer.
To add to the cloudiness, Bertelsmann CEO Andreas Schmidt has said that Napster will receive a licensing agreement through MusicNet by the projected July 1 launch of Napster2, yet Napster has said the company has not signed a contract with MusicNet and would have to look closely at the package that is being offered before doing so. If the two do strike a deal, that's still only 3 out of the big 5 record labels available to users.
We can be sure of customer disenchantment with these models, which may push potential customers over to using any number of file-sharing networks, who are already increasing their user numbers. Where before Napster users were only trading MP3s, new converts of file-sharing networks may be turned on to the fact that you can find other file types here, such as movie files. . .
DeCSS and DivX a Movie Pirate's Best Friend
If you're not familiar with DeCSS, let's clear up just what it is. DVD uses a security method called the Content Scrambling System (CSS). CSS is a form of data encryption used to discourage reading media files directly from the disc without a decryption key. To descramble the video and audio, a 5-byte (40-bit) key is needed.
DeCSS uses DVD playback code found in software-based DVD playback utilities, like WinDVD or XingDVD. Every player has a DVD copy protection decoder for playback, just like the hardware decoder in DVD players from your everyday consumer electronics devices. DeCSS emulates the same playback code but instead of displaying the video and audio to screen, it simply saves it back to the disk without encryption, since there is no encryption in playback. These files are often times then compressed and encoded in the DivX format.
DivX is a platform-independent digital video compression technology based on the ISO MPEG-4 standard (my March column explains MPEG-4 in detail), which has been adopted as the underground file-trading standard (just like MP3 was the grassroots choice before it became mainstream). The DivX
format allows for near-DVD quality downloads of a typical 90-minute feature film in less than 30 minutes through existing broadband connections (under perfect network conditions). Referring to DivX
, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) president Jack Valenti said "I don't see it as a tool of piracy. I see it as a convenience to consumers who want to bring down legitimate licensed films."
Where DivX may look to be a way for Hollywood to distribute their content once there is a system in place, it has quickly become the tool of the digital pirate. Thousands of films in the DivX
format can be found and downloaded off of the Web or from file-sharing networks, putting in "Divx" into my Gnutella client gave results ranging from major movie releases, to episodes of "The Sopranos," to porn (what a surprise).
With Napster you could get away with being on a modem connection and still trade files, but forget about trading videos, you don't have the bandwidth. As more and more people are able to download very large files, expect an exponential increase in the amount of movie files being made available and traded. The music industry was initially spared the agony of dealing with Gnutella after the first injunction against Napster (when thousands of users jumped onto Gnutella, crashing the network), now both the movie and music industry have to deal with a revamped Gnutella, along with some variations on file-sharing, like KaZaA, independent nap servers, AudioGalaxy, and so on.
Clearing the Mud
I think either pressplay or MusicNet will have to eventually bow to the other and join arms to run a co-branded service. Napster, however, is in a very interesting position. If Napster can pull off a licensing agreement with MusicNet, the company might stay afloat, otherwise it'll be the first to drop out of the race. pressplay will have to license its operation to Napster if an agreement between MusicNet and Napster is made, otherwise it will be trying to pull in customers with only 2 major label catalogs. If that happens, Napster may be the only service where you can get music from all 5 major labels from one place (how ironic). If no licenses are issued at all, you will see an increase in piracy and alternative file-sharing program usage because of customer frustration.
Hollywood needs to be smart and launch a subscription-based service before video piracy gets to Napster-type proportions. DivX has already caught on, the number of broadband connections will continue to increase at an exponential rate, and policing file-sharing networks may prove to be more troublesome than it is worth. While video trading is still mainly an underground operation, expect lots of talk later this year on how the movie industry is becoming "Napsterized," and what the industry is doing to combat that trend.
ISPs are already receiving notification by the MPAA notifying them of copyright infringement by their customers. Looking at the statistics from Clip2, this tactic seems to have caused a dramatic decrease of publicly accessible nap servers over the course of the last couple months.
We've got a number of players and components that make up this mystery, and we can only expect more twists and turns in the months to come. Content providers will attempt to beef up copy-protection, hackers will find a way around the watermarking, lawsuits may be filed against ISPs and individual users, and the issue may continue to chase its own tail.
Here's an idea: How about the content providers make it easier to pay for digital content than it would be to obtain it through piracy? Hollywood and especially the music industry have only brought this upon themselves by dragging their heels in getting the public a place to get digital media online. Maybe the music industry can recover from the public's negative perception of them, or maybe the number of users on file-sharing networks will continue to increase, dragging the movie industry down with them as video files become as popular as MP3s. We are witnessing an interesting moment in entertainment history, as the distinction of just who is wearing the white hat and who is wearing the dark hat seems to be ever blurring. Hopefully, in the next few months there will be more construction and decisions made than lawsuits filed.
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Steve is the founder of Lost Dog Found Music, a music industry service that places songwriter's music with publishers and record labels, and an author and producer for the O'Reilly Network.
RealNetworks Announces Initiatives to Drive Commercial Viability of MPEG-4
RealNetworks Launches a Commercial MPEG-4 Interoperability Site; RealVideo 9 technology to be submitted for consideration to MPEG and VCEG Joint Video Team
LOS ANGELES, Streaming Media West/Internet World, April 24
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- RealNetworks(R), Inc. (Nasdaq: RNWK - news; Booth #404),
the global leader in Internet media delivery, announced several initiatives
focused on driving innovation and commercial viability of MPEG-4 using
RealNetworks digital media platform. Today RealNetworks is launching a
commercial MPEG-4 interoperability site powered by RealSystem(R) Servers
(www.realnetworks.com/info/mpeg4). This new site enables MPEG-4 encoder and
player developers and suppliers to verify their early prototypes and
releasable products utilizing RealNetworks' commercially available RealSystem
software. In order to participate broadly in MPEG-4 inoperability tests,
RealNetworks has joined the MPEG-4 Industry Forum. Additionally, RealNetworks
has been and will continue to submit components of RealVideo(R) 9 technology
for consideration to the MPEG and VCEG Joint Video Team, a joint effort
between two leading standards bodies, ITU-T and ISO/IEC MPEG, tasked with
creating a single interoperable solution for a next generation of standard
video coding.
``RealNetworks has always been focused on creating great technology, products, and services for digital media creation and delivery. Supporting industry standards plays a central role in our work,'' said Martin Plaehn, senior vice president, Media Systems, RealNetworks, Inc. ``The creation of an MPEG-4 interoperability site and RealNetworks' proposed contributions to the Joint Video Team further facilitate the commercial viability of the MPEG-4 standard.''
``Apple is excited that RealNetworks has joined the MPEG-4 Industry Forum and will work to help further the adoption of the MPEG-4 open standard,'' said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. ``With streaming media leaders like Apple and RealNetworks working together to provide true interoperability with MPEG-4, customers and content providers will be the winners.''
Today's announcement reflects RealNetworks' ongoing effort to participate in the development and adoption of standards for the streaming media industry. These efforts have resulted in fundamental industry standards such as RTSP (Real-time Streaming Protocol) and SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language), both of which are commercially supported in the RealSystem and fully interoperable with many media delivery products available today.
``As a premier and experienced provider of standards-based products, Sun is working closely with RealNetworks to provide broadcasters and network operators commercially viable MPEG-4 solutions for large-scale deployments using the RealSystem, running on the Solaris operating environment, and Sun enterprise servers and storage,'' said Jonathan Schwartz, senior vice president and chief strategy officer, Sun Microsystems, Inc. ``We share RealNetworks' focus and enthusiasm in facilitating interoperability with third party authoring tools and media enabled consumer products.''
Realizing commercial interoperability for the MPEG-4 standard via the RealSystem platform provides multiple benefits to our partners and customers:
-- Content owners and broadcasters have continued freedom and flexibility
in creating and distributing their content in whatever format fits
their business needs.
-- Network operators can deliver multiple media types, including MPEG-4,
through a single infrastructure while gaining performance, fault
resilience, systems management and application integration benefits.
-- Device manufacturers have the flexibility to choose an MPEG-4 player
software provider independent of the delivery platform decision.
-- Third-party content creators benefit from the numerous installed
networks of RealSystem software that enables reliable broadcast and
delivery of MPEG-4 content over any IP network to large consumers
audiences and business users worldwide.
Additionally, RealNetworks is submitting to the MPEG and VCEG Joint Video Team (JVT) several components of Real Video 9 for consideration in MPEG-4 part 10 including refinements to systems and methods for intracoding video data, which would increase the efficiency of key frame encoding and provide content owners and the end-user with higher quality video at lower bit rates. RealNetworks is actively engaged with other industry experts in the JVT to advance state-of-the-art, standard-based video coding.
About RealNetworks
RealNetworks, Inc. is the global leader in Internet media delivery. It develops and markets software products and services designed to enable users of personal computers and consumer electronic devices to send and receive audio, video and other multimedia services using the Web. Consumers can access and experience audio/video programming and download RealNetworks' consumer software on the Internet at http://www.real.com. RealNetworks' systems and corporate information is located on the Internet at http://www.realnetworks.com.
NOTE: RealNetworks, RealVideo and RealSystem are trademarks or registered trademarks of RealNetworks, Inc. All other companies or products listed herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
SOURCE: RealNetworks, Inc.
RealNetworks Releases Major Breakthrough in Audio and Video for Today's Consumers
RealVideo 9 Enables Broadcast Quality for Broadband Users and Subscription Quality for Dial-Up Users
Rapid Adoption of RealVideo 9 and RealAudio Surround Driven by 65 Leading Media Companies, Content Creation Tools Providers and the RealOne SuperPass Subscription Services
LOS ANGELES, Streaming Media West/Internet World, April 24
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- RealNetworks(R), Inc. (Nasdaq: RNWK - news; Booth #404),
the global leader in Internet media delivery, today released
RealVideo(R) 9 and RealAudio(R) Surround, bringing broadcast quality video to
broadband users and a subscription quality video experience to dialup users.
RealVideo 9 provides 30% bandwidth savings over RealVideo 8 at all quality
levels. Combined with RealAudio Surround, RealVideo 9 delivers home theatre
experiences that require a small fraction of the storage space used by DVD.
RealAudio Surround enables multi-channel surround sound starting at 44 Kbps
and works with millions of receivers already in consumers' homes.
RealNetworks also continued its tradition of standards leadership by
submitting components of RealVideo 9 to the Joint Video Team, a joint working
group of MPEG and VCEG that will create the next version of MPEG-4.
``Content owners are embracing RealVideo 9 for two reasons,'' said Martin Plaehn, senior vice president, Media Systems, RealNetworks, Inc. ``First, it reduces video storage and delivery costs by 30%. Second, RealVideo 9 provides a dramatically improved experience for both dialup and broadband consumers. When coupled with premium sports, news and entertainment programming, this new video experience makes video subscription services more compelling for consumers.''
``We have always recognized that RealNetworks is at the forefront of technology, and is a leading innovator for media delivery on the Internet,'' said Bernard Gershon, senior vice president and general manager, ABC News.com. ``RealVideo 9 at both low and high bandwidths is a true breakthrough. I believe that RealVideo 9 will show modem users, for the first time, how good Internet video can be.''
Combined with the interactive, three-pane environment and instant-on capability of the RealOne Player, as well as RealNetworks' subscription management, digital rights management, and media delivery software products and services, RealVideo 9 and RealAudio Surround enable the next generation of revenue-generating audio and video services on the Internet.
Quality Breakthroughs for All Consumers
RealVideo 9 and RealAudio Surround together offer consumers at all connection speeds the best Internet media experience available today.
Narrowband: Next-generation advancements in video compression technology for dial-up connection speeds make half-screen video at dial-up bit rates a reality.
Broadband: Consumers can watch VHS quality starting at 160Kbps.
Home Theatre: With near DVD quality video and surround sound audio now possible at 500 Kbps, RealVideo 9 and RealAudio Surround greatly improve the economics of Internet-movie distribution. Two full-length movies can now be stored on a CD and up to fifteen full-length movies will fit on a DVD. RealVideo 9 also supports all HDTV formats and resolutions at data rates far below traditional HDTV.
A showcase of RealVideo 9 content is available at www.realnetworks.com/info/realvideo.
Rapid Adoption of RealVideo 9
Consumers will start enjoying RealVideo 9 at many of their favorite Web sites today. Twenty-two content providers including FoxSports.com, Maverick Records, and New Line Cinema have RealVideo 9 content available for consumers today, with an additional 15 content partners announcing their intent to deploy RealVideo 9 content in the future. Moreover, adoption of RealVideo 9 throughout the industry will be accelerated through RealVideo 9 content offered in RealNetworks industry leading RealOne SuperPass subscription service.
Content providers with content available now include: Animal Channel.org, Arista Nashville, Atlantic Records, BNA Records, Capitol Records, EMI, Fox Home Video, FoxSports.com, InterScope Records, Island Records, Maverick Records, MCA Records, New Line Cinema, RCA Records, Santuary Records, Universal/Motown Records, V2 Records, Verve Music Group, Virgin Records, and Warner Brothers Records.
Additional content providers supporting RealVideo 9 in the future include: ABC News.com, allFOOD.com, Ansaweb S.p.A, BBC, Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG), Conhem, Court TV, E-Channels Corporation, Energis, iFilm, Inspace (PaseLatino), PBA, Skanova, Telia, Vidzone, and Warner Bros. Online.
Market-Leading Content Creation Tools Support RealVideo 9
Content creators can start creating RealVideo 9 and RealAudio Surround content today using a preview release of the RealSystem Producer 9, available from www.realnetworks.com/info/realvideo. Additionally, both AnyStream and Discreet today announced support for RealVideo 9.
Other technology providers supporting RealVideo 9 include: Accordent, Adobe Systems, Akamai, Arbitron, AT&T Corporation, Avid Technology, Digital Island, Equant, France Telecom, Intel, LearnKey, Loudeye Technologies, MeasureCast, NEC, OPTX International, Pinnacle Systems, Real Broadcast Network, SofTV, Sonic Foundry, Speedera Networks, TechSmith, Viewcast, Williams Communications, and Winnov.
``We are pleased to be working with Real to integrate the new RealVideo 9 codec with Adobe Premiere and After Effects,'' said Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president of Adobe's Graphics business unit. ``Our customers will soon be able to export RealVideo 9 content, making streaming media production even easier.''
``RealVideo 9 and RealAudio Surround decoders optimized for Intel's Pentium 4 processor deliver an enhanced video and audio experience for playing rich media content to both consumers and enterprises alike,'' said Tom Gibbs, director Solutions Market Development Group, Intel Corporation. ``Leading companies like RealNetworks with their RealOne SuperPass subscription service demonstrate the industry's commitment to providing outstanding media experiences on the PC as well as on mobile devices.'' Intel and RealNetworks are working together to ensure that RealVideo 9 is optimized for the Intel Personal Internet Client Architecture (Intel® PCA) Processors for mobile phones, smart phones, PDAs, and in-vehicle systems.
``With RealAudio Surround and one of the millions of Dolby® Pro Logic® enabled consumer receivers, consumers can immediately enjoy multi-channel surround sound streamed directly from the Internet into their living room,'' said Ed Schummer, senior vice president and general manager, Consumer Division, Dolby Laboratories Inc.
``RealAudio Surround broadens the advancement of the surround sound industry,'' said Jennifer Drescher, vice president, Marketing of SRS Labs. ``We're very excited to be working with RealNetworks at the dawn of this high quality IP revolution that RealAudio Surround is enabling. We look forward to the expanded business opportunities it provides SRS and our CircleSurround technology as we enable consumers to enjoy streaming surround sound at their desktop or through their home theater system.''
Availability
A showcase of RealVideo 9 content is available at www.realnetworks.com/info/realvideo. RealOne Player and RealPlayer 8 (Windows, Mac) support RealVideo 9 today. RealVideo 9 will be available for the RealOne Player for Unix and RealPlayer for PocketPC within 30 days. A preview of the next RealSystem Producer is available at www.realnetworks.com/info/realvideo. The RealSystem Producer preview runs on Windows 95 and above as well as Linux 2.2 and 2.4 kernels.
About RealNetworks
RealNetworks, Inc. is the global leader in Internet media delivery. It develops and markets software products and services designed to enable users of personal computers and consumer electronic devices to send and receive audio, video and other multimedia services using the Web. Consumers can access and experience audio/video programming and download RealNetworks' consumer software on the Internet at http://www.real.com . RealNetworks' systems and corporate information is located on the Internet at http://www.realnetworks.com .
NOTE: RealNetworks, RealSystem, RealVideo, RealAudio, RealOne, and RealPlayer and are trademarks or registered trademarks of RealNetworks, Inc. All other companies or products listed herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
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DataPlay, a New Technology for Information Distribution
The proliferation of mobile devices and platforms has driven the development of a new method for the utilization, distribution, storage and content protection of information, namely the DataPlay digital media and micro-optical engine.
The DataPlay technology consists of a 32mm optical disc that can be recorded to (up to 500 MB by downloading for example) and yet also can contain several hundred MB of prerecorded data in an embossed form somewhat akin to a DVD or CD. The disc is compatible with the most advanced forms of digital compression, music, data and video. Selective access to the content elements is provided so that the secondary content, for example, can be made available in transactions subsequent to the initial purchase.
Since all the discs can be recorded to, as well as carry the prerecorded information, it is possible to write to the media unique encryption and conditional access keys that allow the content owner to specify the desired content protection scheme. For example the permitting of limited copying, or the prevention of wide scale illegal distribution, can be controlled through keys that are written to the disc itself and follow the disc through multiple generations. The ability to bind these keys to the disc ensures that the content protection is disc based rather than host based so that once accessed the disc can be played on any compatible player; this makes the content control generally transparent to the user unless the content rules are violated.
The 32mm discs are played and recorded on the DataPlay micro-optical engine, which at 11mm by 52mm by 47mm is the smallest optical recorder/player ever developed. The heart of the device is the mixed signal CMOS controller IC developed by DataPlay together with its partner ST Micro. This ASIC not only provides the channel, interface and decode/encode functions but also has integrated in it the most powerful ECC scheme ever commercialized in this field. Also embedded is a DES3 encryption engine and a DSP based servo control function for tracking and focusing. The engine is also the first example of an optical drive that uses a tilting rotary actuator that permits rapid data access in a simple mechanism. All this is enabled by the smallest most integrated optical pick up head ever developed; this optical head weighs only a few grams and rides on the end of the rotary actuator. The combination of low mass optics and mechanics as well as the low laser power needed to write to the disc results in a low power consumption system that only dissipates a few hundred mw in typical applications.
MicroOSTM - Micro Operating System - e.Digital's proprietary MicroOS is extremely compact, full-featured and highly customizable embedded operating system designed specifically for portable digital devices. MicroOS manages data files as well as codecs, integrates security systems for content protection and handles uploading and downloading files to PCs. Important features include:
Power and memory conservation - eliminates the need for a high-powered CPU by paring down all code to run efficiently on a low-cost microcontroller preserving valuable memory for other applications.
Extends Flash memory capabilities - Memory management transparently deals with bad blocks, erase blocks, wear leveling and is independent of data and erase block sizes.
Advanced editing features - insert and delete allows editing of files by inserting material at any point without erasing what follows, and deleting of selected portions of a file without spaces, blanks, or silences being left behind.
MicroOS is applicable to any product that utilizes flash memory or rotating media as its primary storage medium including:
Voice Recorders
One and two way voice pagers
Digital cameras
Cellular phones
Portable Internet music players
Handheld PCs
Set-top boxes
Kiosks
Posted by: Tinroad
In reply to: None Date: 2/13/2002 6:12:50 PM
Post # of 11559
A supposition that's costing me some sleep... (from Jan 18th, 2001)
The way I see it, the non-standard file structure used by MicroOS would render data files created/assembled via MicroOS (in non-sequential but not necessarily non-contiguous blocks internally linked via header-embedded and possibly key-encrypted last/next pointer data) manageable but unusable by normal FAT-based file managers. The FAT disk mgmt system used to track file locations could be used to track what physical locations are in use by MicroOS files, but wouldn't necessarily have the ability to read their data in the proper, sensible sequence. That task would be done via a MicroOS kernel, using the MicroOS block header info (and a unique decoding key if desired/needed for security reasons) to determine the proper assembled sequence for the blocks comprising the file.
Without the MicroOS file manager, DOS/Windows/ etc could see and manage the files, (FAT knows where they are) but not successfully retrieve the contained data in the sequence needed by an application (FAT manager alone doesn't know the correct block sequence). Several layers of security are thus provided. Then again, maybe I'm making something out of nothing; that's why I need feedback from folks acquainted with the real facts re file mgmt/storage techniques & practices.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Reply from an programmer at Microsoft-Redmond...
"Thanks for the clarification and thus your premise is entirely feasible. Much of the file system in Windows is very abstracted from the hardware, so as long as MicroOS maintains the same interfaces to the FAT table then the actual file data can be anything. Also the MicroOS can use Windows installable file system -- like Unix. In fact, DataPlay uses this technique to enable their drive and my guess is that the MicroOS is serving as the underlying interface. Also the MicroOS can fit as a device driver. Or as Jimee pointed out replace the entire file system and be compiled directly into the kernel. I'm not familiar with the specific security aspects of the MicroOS but it is quite possible to use the MicroOS to replace part of all of another OS's file system -- thus the DOS2MOS as you and Haiyaku often allude. Once again I cannot absolutely say that VedaLabs is using the MicroOS but I'm beginning to clearly see why you are losing sleep."
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
OK, if you have absorbed and understood the above technobabble, understand the MicroOS base patent, and are aware that virtually ALL of the installed base of PCs uses one form or another of the standard FAT12, 16 or 32 file management systems, try rereading my original 'Sleepless' posts...
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=581952
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=581994
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=582014
Unless everyone at EDIG, INTC, ITRU, LQID, RNWK, SDMI, TXN, CRUS, etc is asleep at the wheel, some or all of MicroOS' patented technology might well have crept into the secure file protection/processing/distribution chain. If so, 'Global Standard' is not an unrealistic goal.
An addendum...
I see the possibility of locking content by encrypting the last/next pointers used by MOS via proprietary algorithm/key code, maybe licensed from Verance or someone else & grafted onto the MOS kernel. The same code would be used by the content distributor to generate the secure files to be distributed.
It was pointed out to me that the FAT systems also use last/next pointers in their block headers, just as MicroOS does. However, as I envision it, this external stuff would be added over the underlying MOS headers, which would just be regarded/treated by the FAT system as pure data, rather than headers appended to blocks of data. Only the MOS would see them for what they actually are (after the FAT system retrieves the raw data file from disk). When you transfer the PC-resident files to a portable device, the FAT headers are discarded, leaving only a pure MicroOS-based file to be processed by the device itself, leaving behind all the excess baggage and overhead requirements inherent to FAT-based file management. Needless to say, in the area of direct transfers to portables/mobiles from satellite/wireless transmissions or broadband cable modems, the FAT attributes/overhead aren't needed at all.
* * * * * * * * *
Caveat to the impatient:
I wouldn't count on any significant revenues from potential EDIG involvement in secure downloads, satellite radio or DataPlay disk mastering until those respective markets develop. This remains a highly speculative stock, although the sufficiently diligent already know that. If you go overboard on diligence, try not to miss the forest for the trees. (I certainly hope I haven't.)
* * * * * * * * *
A PS request: Please don't pester EDIG with attempts to ascertain whether or not they are using MicroOS as an encryption tool as I have speculated above. I briefly flew the matter by Robert and was totally stonewalled, not even a "no comment". Take it from a former military crypto gear repairman; such matters are never discussed with those not having a need to know.
Best wishes,
Tinroad
A later follow-up from a fellow long:
"I recall 'Mike' (I will call him that ) was indeed a senior DataPlay engineer. He spoke very highly of what EDIG had done for DataPlay. He talked about how they had 'Universal', or one of the other record company tied up, by hiring of a major record company agent who brought them in the 'fold' He then talked about the DataPlay disk, saying that they would sell that small disk for $10.00 dollars or less, with a CD already encoded on the disk. Then, the disk owner would have the option of logging on to their site, and for payments made he would be able to download more songs on to the disk that he had bought. It was at this stage that DataPlay would use a "KEY" to unlock the 'gate' which EDIG had helped put in place on the disk. That 'gate' is most certainly "another" use of MOS to permit 'secure' downloading of music from the internet."
An even later follow-up:
The stashing of portions of the MicroOS in silicon (via the Actel programmable gate array deal) only serves to enhance the security of MicroOS as a means of rendering files inaccessible without the proper hardware/software.
* * * * * * * * *
Disclaimer: None of my conjectures and speculations are to be taken as fact. Neither do I have any way to verify any of the anecdotal statements and opinions quoted above; they should also be construed as conjecture rather than as fact. Do your own DD before making any investment decision. I am a shareholder in e.Digital.
The Office Hits the Road
Companies make it easier to access from the field
By Edward J. Correia
March 15, 2002 — Many companies employ people who travel between the office and client sites – time taken up by travel that could be spent on other tasks. Now, several companies are developing ways recoup some of that lost productivity by making enterprise applications more accessible from the field.
“IBM is getting involved in the automotive computing platform because once it becomes connected to the rest of the networks, it becomes relevant,” said Raj S. Desai, worldwide director of automotive solutions at IBM Corp. Through the company’s pervasive computing solutions group (www-3.ibm.com/pvc), IBM is developing telematics, a term the industry is using to identify an emerging market that links mobile computing devices with a user’s location, and delivers applications accordingly. “Now for the first time you have a computing platform in the car and that time can be used
“Automobiles are being seen now as mobile offices,” said Alec Saunders, vice president of marketing at embedded developer QNX Software Systems Ltd., which has developed a telematics solution that combines its RTOS with IBM’s ViaVoice software, which Saunders said will help reduce driver distraction by enabling application operation using voice commands.
According to Saunders, some of the telematics applications in use today tap into global positioning systems to help farmers spread fertilizers and to provide load logistics and management for commercial delivery vehicles. Desai said other early adopters will be the automotive industry for vehicle diagnostics and failure detection, and corporations for CRM and sales force automation applications. Sales people could scan customer or prospect information immediately prior to calls and add to the file afterwards.
Some of the challenges, Desai said, involve communications, particularly when creating applications that need to operate nationally and to seamlessly handle interruptions in service “GSM[Global System for Mobile Communications] is a standard in Europe, so it’s not as big a problem. But here in North America, we use several [communications protocols]. The way to deal with this is perhaps to have a couple of communications mechanisms, some for low data bandwidth, some for high. It all depends on the cost. At a minimum you will have to have one service provider that has reasonable coverage across the board.” Most domestic wireless carriers will address this problem when they migrate to so-called 3G networks, which will be designed to interoperate. Angus McIntyre, product manager for IBM’s embedded Java, said that IBM’s answer to intermittency of service will be with DB2 Everyplace for local storage on the device, and Message Queuing Everyplace for the server. “As a car enters a tunnel [for example], DB2 Everyplace will queue up your transactions and complete them when you exit the tunnel,” he claimed.
Embedded systems developer Nomadix Inc. (www.nomadix.com) claims to simplify some communications problems. It offers gateway software for wireless Ethernet access points that it claims allows mobile executives with 802.11 and a Web browser to access to corporate applications via the Internet.
Creative Technology More Than Triples Third Quarter Earnings Year-Over-Year
Exceeds Expectations by Achieving Q3 EPS of 20 Cents
SINGAPORE, April 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Creative Technology Ltd. (Nasdaq: CREAF - news), the worldwide leader in digital entertainment products for users of the personal computer and the Internet, today announced financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2002, ended March 31, 2002. All financial results are stated in U.S. dollars.
Creative reported third quarter sales of $193.4 million, at the top end of the company's expectations for the period. Sales for the third quarter of the previous year were $262.0 million.
Third quarter net income of $15.1 million or $0.20 per share was more than triple the previous year's Q3 operating results which were net income of $4.6 million or 6 cents per share. The previous year's operating results for the same quarter exclude one-time charges of $31.0 million and write-down of investments of $75.4 million in that quarter.
Sales for the first nine months of fiscal year 2002 were $623.3 million, compared to $992.8 million for the same period last year. Net income excluding charges and write-downs for the first nine months of fiscal 2002 was $44.2 million or $0.59 per share, compared to net income before charges and write-downs of $46.6 million or $0.57 per share for the same period last year. Including charges and write-downs, net income for the first nine months of fiscal 2002 was $28.6 million or $0.38 per share, compared to a net loss of $56.9 million or $0.72 per share for the first nine months of the previous fiscal year.
``This was another solid quarter for Creative, as we came in at the high end of our revenue guidance, again achieved gross margins above 33%, and significantly reduced operating expenses. Such strong performance in each of these operational areas resulted in earnings of 20 cents per share, over 40% above our expectations,'' said Craig McHugh, president of Creative Labs, Inc. ``We also strengthened our balance sheet, growing cash to $196 million, which is an increase of 10% over the previous quarter, and of 36% over the same quarter last year. We reached a key milestone in the quarter with the adoption of the Creative's Sound Blaster® Audigy(TM) by Gateway, Inc. as a standard feature on its 700 Series PCs and as an upgrade option on its 500 Series PCs. We also had our first full quarter of volume shipments of our broadband digital modems to America Online. Another key accomplishment in the quarter was the announcement in March of our definitive agreement to acquire 3Dlabs, Inc., which we anticipate closing in this current fourth quarter.''
Hock Leow, Chief Technology Officer of Creative Technology noted, ``Based upon what we have now seen from the fully functioning prototype of 3Dlabs' highly anticipated programmable TeraOps visual processor, I believe that we will be able to rededicate our efforts to the consumer graphics market with an awesome product line under a business model that more closely resembles our very successful core audio businesses.''
``During the quarter, we shipped our first external Sound Blaster, the Sound Blaster Extigy(TM) and received exceptional reviews, including four out of four stars from USA Today, a five out of five from PC Magazine and 'Editor's Choice' awards from CNET and ZDNET,'' said Sim Wong Hoo, chairman and CEO of Creative Technology Ltd. ``We also announced the new NOMAD® Jukebox 3 last week, and have already been awarded an 'Editor's Choice' award from CNET. As we look forward to the next quarter and beyond, we will reinforce our leadership in digital audio with a new and exciting family of NOMAD hard-disk and flash-based digital audio players with unique form factors to address different lifestyle segments of the market. We will also be announcing, later this week, an exciting and revolutionary new product that will bring a new dimension to music entertainment, which I call interactive music entertainment. This product will also complement the superior audio quality of the Sound Blaster Audigy and Extigy.''
Times Have Changed Since Heyday of Free MP3s: Scholastic Poll Shows 62% of Kids Support Copyright Protection
NEW YORK, April 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Kids' attitudes toward downloading material from the Internet have changed since the days of free MP3s. An online poll conducted by Scholastic Inc., the global children's publishing and media company, revealed that approximately 62 percent of kids in grades 1 through 8 think that one should have to pay for downloading others' work off the Internet, while only approximately 38 percent think that downloading materials should be free. The poll, online at Scholastic News Zone(TM) (http://www.scholasticnews.com), a leading source on the web for age-appropriate, daily news content for kids, received more than 35,000 responses between April 8th and April 15th, 2002.
Shrija, age 10, from California said: ``If everybody were to download from the Internet for free, the people who do the work won't get paid.''
Kasey, age 6, from Florida wrote: ``The people that write and sing the music work really hard. I think people should buy the music if they are interested in it.''
Olivia, age 10, from Texas said: ``I think that downloading things such as books and music off of the Internet for free should be allowed. Sometimes you really need something and you don't have the money to buy it.''
``There's been a real shift in kids' public opinion on the issue of free Internet downloads. Kids are recognizing that authors and artists essentially own their works, and believe they should be paid for them,'' said David Goddy, Publisher of Scholastic Classroom Magazines. ``We may be seeing the effect of efforts to warn the public, and especially kids, about what it means to download books, music and other materials for free that are protected by copyright in other mediums. This may also reflect the ages of our respondents, who are younger and may not have as much familiarity with online music sources as older teens and young adults.''
The Scholastic poll is not based on a scientifically designed sample of the student population. It is designed as an educational activity to encourage student thought and debate, and to give students an opportunity to express their opinions. The respondents are self-selected, based on teachers who want their classes to participate and students who want to participate individually.
About Scholastic Inc.
Scholastic (Nasdaq: SCHL - news) is the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books. As a global children's publishing and media company serving the needs of parents, teachers, and children, Scholastic provides proprietary book and software distribution through school book clubs, school book fairs and to classrooms, as well as through the retail trade. Since 1920, Scholastic has created quality educational materials for schools and has expanded its reach to include the distribution of books, software, toys, online learning services and television programming directly to the home. Scholastic's Grolier division is the leading print and online publisher of children's reference materials and the leader in children's direct-to-home book clubs. Internationally, Scholastic operates wholly owned companies in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, The Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the United Kingdom. The U.S. Scholastic web site <http://www.scholastic.com> is a leading provider of educational services online for parents, teachers and children.
SOURCE: Scholastic Inc.
jimc--if you assume approximately 50 treos sold every 10 days by good guys that would mean approximately 150 units sold over 30 days by 75 stores--which according to my math averages 1 unit sold per location every 15 days rather than everyday--how does this impact your calculations?
By: heybrad $$$$$
19 Apr 2002, 06:54 PM EDT Msg. 956241 of 956298
Good Guys... 50 Treos on order for the entire chain of Good Guys stores due April 21st 2002. Also confirmed that the last order of 50 was on April 11 2002.. I purchased my TV today and had the salesman check just to make sure the info the Brea store gave me was correct. The confirmation this time came from their Tustin Store. I spoke a little to the saleman about this. He confirmed they were out of stock at the Tustin store and made a comment that no stores had placed orders for any of the Treos coming in. My take from what he was saying is that the stores that have request or are selling them will make orders for portions of those fifty and those that don't have demand wont. Seems really strange for an item they have on ad!!
Scientific-Atlanta, a developer of digital TV set-top boxes,
announced on Friday that it has begun consumer trials of its new Explorer
8000 home entertainment servers. In addition to receiving digital cable TV
signals, the device also supports interactive TV features and contains a
personal video recorder with 80GB hard drive. Scientific-Atlanta also
plans future networking capabilities for the device, enabling it to share
content throughout the home such as video, music and digital images. The
company expects volume shipments of the Explorer 8000 to begin in June.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020418/atth029_1.html
http://www.sciatl.com/customers/prod_sub_explorer_family.htm
Free Music Outpacing Subscription Services in Western Europe
London -- Interest in free music file-sharing services is increasing in
Western Europe at the same time that traffic to legitimate subscription
services offered there is waning, according to a recently published report
from Jupiter MMXI -- the European arm of research firm Jupiter Media
Metrix. Visitors to sites hosting free file-sharing software including
Kazaa, MusicCity's Morpheus and Audiogalaxy increased from 10.7 million to
11.3 million between January and March 2002, while traffic to MP3.com,
Peoplesound.com, Vitaminic and other legitimate music sites dwindled from
2.5 million to 2 million during the same period. The major record labels
have yet to launch overseas versions of their MusicNet and Pressplay
subscription services. "The record industry needs to crack down hard and
fast on the software companies behind file sharing networks and at the
same time get serious about licensing content so that legitimate services
can offer compelling alternatives." said Jupiter MMXI analyst Mark
Mulligan. "If they fail to do this, the free music mindset will become
permanently embedded in the new generation of music listeners and paid-for
music services in Europe will never get off the ground."
http://uk.jupitermmxi.com/xp/uk/press/releases/pr_041802.xml
let's hope for some substantial news next tuesday from divx coming out of the streaming west conference
duke- thanks; i saw that; i dn think edig in pogo, but wondering if i objects/fply in evolution video player?
murgirl-but i prefer intel when i think world domination (LOL):
http://www.intel.com/procs/perf/resources/desktop/index.htm
CinemaNow, a provider of Internet-based
video-on-demand services, said on Thursday that it has partnered with
broadband entertainment network provider Cflix to offer CinemaNow films to
Duke University students. The films will be delivered on Cflix's system,
which transmits content on Duke's closed network at speeds up to 700kbps.
CinemaNow and Cflix also plan to examine the online behavior of the
college student demographic as well as their demand for downloadable and
streaming Internet-based film content. Marina del Rey-based CinemaNow said
that additional college campuses are expected to roll out in fall of 2002.
http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/f_headline.cgi?day0/221080126&ticker=lgf/lgf.to
http://www.cinemanow.com
===========================================
CinemaNow shows off VOD 'central nervous system'
By Ann Donahue
OCT. 1 / CinemaNow on Monday unveiled "PatchBay," a technology that can be licensed by other Web sites in order to distribute video-on-demand online content.
PatchBay was built on the Microsoft Windows operating system, thereby making it compatible for content shown via the Windows Media Player. It is the technology that CinemaNow uses to distribute its library of more than 250 feature-length films.
The company hopes to turn the technology into a revenue generator, billing it as a way for dot-coms that are interested in having VOD to securely track the transmission of films and the revenue generated from them.
"We look forward to working with companies to implement PatchBay as the central nervous system for their video-on-demand initiatives," said Brad Serling, CinemaNow's chief technology officer.
Besides tracking and delivering content, PatchBay also includes capabilities for digital rights protection that can limit the number of times video is shown; e-commerce management for sites wanting to integrate virtual stores into their offerings; and advertising that works on any IP-enabled device, including set-top boxes and handhelds.
"PatchBay leverages all the most competitive aspects of IP-based video-on-demand, including worldwide distribution and a high rate of potential revenue return to distributors, in a form that can be easily implemented by studios and production companies seeking to further monetize their film libraries," said CEO Curt Marvis.
CinemaNow, the online arm of Lions Gate Entertainment, and Microsoft have long been part of a strategic relationship to provide VOD content via the software giant's media player. PatchBay also supports earlier versions of Microsoft's video technology.
Technology: DataPlay - the next great storage format?
By JON HEALEY, Los Angeles Times
BOULDER, Colorado (March 9, 2002 11:32 p.m. EST) - Digital technology is built on an elegantly simple foundation, a universal language of ones and zeros. Yet when it comes to storing those ones and zeros, the electronics world is a mess of incompatible memory cards, sticks and disks.
DataPlay Inc., a start-up bred in a Rocky Mountain hotbed for data-storage engineers, hopes to lead consumers out of the chaos with a new, universal format.
A wafer-thin disk encased in a 1 1/4-inch square of plastic, each piece of DataPlay media can hold at least five hours of CD-quality music, one hour of video, one console-style video game, 1,000 high-resolution digital photos or 100 e-books.
It's a masterpiece of engineering that gives at least one multibillion-dollar business - the music industry - exactly what it wants: a new medium that resists piracy.
More than 20 years have passed since the introduction of the compact disc, which boosted sales by prompting music lovers to buy new versions of the records they owned. Now CD sales are flat, and the industry needs a jolt.
The disks' multimedia capabilities and encryption technology could spark new approaches to selling music, movies and other digital material. For example, record companies could load a 500-megabyte DataPlay disk with music videos, backstage photos, tour schedules and older albums waiting to be unlocked for an extra fee.
For every new format that reached mass acceptance, however, there are a dozen or more that didn't. One reason is the fierce competition among electronics companies, many of which bring their own formats to market.
A more fundamental question is whether the public will embrace any new format for portable storage, particularly one that works only on new devices built for that format.
In the not-too-distant future, consumers will be connected continuously to the Internet at high speed, and their devices will talk to each other wirelessly. They'll download digital music and movie files from the Web and store their collections on computer hard drives instead of bookshelves.
With technology like that, why would anyone need disks? That world is still a few years away, yet some analysts say it's close enough to spell trouble for DataPlay.
"DataPlay is caught between a rock and a hard place, the rock being the CD and the hard place being the advent of digital music (online)," said analyst Mark Mooradian of Jupiter Media Metrix, a technology research and consulting firm. "It becomes very difficult to imagine a place for a format like DataPlay. It looks very transitional."
To make matters worse, engineering delays pushed DataPlay at least six months behind schedule. Instead of making their debut last fall in time for holiday sales, the disks and players are now expected in April.
Those delays have left a number of consumer electronics and media companies in a we'll-believe-it-when-we-see-it mode. "If DataPlay matures to the point where it's accepted by the mass market, then we would be more inclined to produce devices," said Phil O'Shaughnessy, a spokesman for consumer-electronics manufacturer Creative Labs.
Steve Volk, DataPlay's founder and chief executive, shrugs off the delays. Factories belonging to partners in North Dakota and Taiwan are cranking out blank DataPlay media as fast as they can make it. Another partner in China is assembling tens of thousands of the tiny, box-shaped "storage engines" that will read and record the disks, supplied by optical components from DataPlay's own plant in Singapore.
"We are in volume production now," Volk said, adding that the rest of the pieces are largely out of his company's control.
DataPlay's headquarters are in Boulder, a college town that became a mecca for data storage after IBM Corp. put a pioneering magnetic-storage plant here a quarter-century ago. Volk made a name for himself as an entrepreneur in that area, credited with helping a series of companies develop the pint-sized hard drives used by laptops, personal digital assistants and Apple's iPod MP3 player.
After devising the concept for DataPlay in his basement four years ago, Volk pulled together a team of experts from the magnetic and optical-storage fields. The basic idea was simple: to create a small, inexpensive disk that stored information as densely as a DVD.
Turning Volk's cardboard mock-ups into working models, however, required a series of technological leaps.
Chief Technical Officer Dave Davies, a former 3M engineer who helped introduce the CD-ROM, said DataPlay had to come up with much more effective error-correction technology while dramatically cutting the size and power consumption of the components that read and burn the disks.
Like a DVD recorder, the DataPlay engine uses a laser to change the physical properties of a blank disk, creating a digital code of bumps and pits in the disk's grooves. The optical components that do this work are "the world's smallest by a very large margin," Davies said.
The disks can be recorded only once, a significant sacrifice that DataPlay made for the sake of disk longevity and battery life. But unlike virtually every other kind of media, the double-sided disks can offer prerecorded material with blank space for consumers' data.
That means consumers buying a new U2 album on DataPlay, for example, could customize the disk with older U2 songs and pictures from a U2 concert. Or they could buy an electronic key online to unlock additional albums, videos or other material hidden on the disk.
"We don't intend to be a small CD," Volk said. "We intend to give you the tour, the album, the video and a lot more. It's a different consumer experience."
Each side of a DataPlay disk has only about one-third the capacity of a CD, but the methods it uses to compress and store audio data are 10 times as efficient. That means a single disk can hold about 80 CD-quality songs, or three albums' worth of music remastered at better-than-CD quality.
DataPlay ran into delays as it worked to drive down costs and set up production lines overseas, but company officials say they've hit all the technical marks. Now, as the first generation of DataPlay devices goes into production, the company is working on ways to boost the disk's capacity to 1 gigabyte and beyond while slimming the engine's profile.
Volk said the company has spent $125 million so far, the bulk of it coming from venture capital firms and corporate investors. These include photography powerhouses Eastman Kodak Co. and Olympus Optical Co., chip maker Intel Corp., giant music retailer Trans World Entertainment Corp., and Asian electronics conglomerates Toshiba and Samsung.
Also backing DataPlay is Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company. DataPlay officials said that three of the five major record companies - Universal, EMI and BMG - each pledged to have 50 hit albums in DataPlay format, although Universal is expected to have only 10 to 15 titles ready by May.
The CD will be hard to replace, given the millions of disc players installed in homes, cars and offices. But the music industry is eager to supplant it with copy-protected media, which not only combat piracy but also enable new business models.
Larry Kenswil, president of Universal ELabs, said the CD makes it difficult for the labels to sell packages of music with fewer rights - for example, an album that could be played only on one device, or for a set amount of time.
"That forces the price of the CD to be very high in the first place, and secondly eliminates the possibility of pricing things lower for fewer rights," he said.
Any kind of data can be stored on a DataPlay disk, but a DataPlay-equipped music player will play only music files that have been encrypted, Volk said. In other words, a DataPlay device can't play MP3s unless they're wrapped in software that prevents them from being copied or moved to other computers.
The encryption features have cooled the enthusiasm of one early backer, Sonicblue Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based consumer electronics company.
"They've sold their soul to Universal," said Andrew Wolfe, Sonicblue's chief technical officer. "There are so many rules and restrictions about what you can put on the disk and what you can't put on the disk, it just doesn't fit into our infrastructure."
Samsung, Toshiba and San Diego-based E.Digital Corp., on the other hand, all have announced plans for music players, cameras and adapters that enable computers to read DataPlay disks. The first DataPlay device, due April 15, is a $350 player from Evolution Technologies Inc. of Raleigh, N.C., that's based on an E.Digital design.
Prices will be high initially, because the DataPlay engine costs about $100, said Brad Deifer, chief executive of Evolution. By contrast, supporting a CompactFlash memory card requires a connector that costs less than 50 cents, said Nelson Chan of SanDisk Corp., a leading manufacturer of flash memory products.
Volk said the company's investors are committed to the format, giving the firm plenty of time to establish the new medium. "I don't think DataPlay's viability is an issue here," he added.
Still, even successful formats take years to win over the masses. Although the proliferation of portable digital gear and the rising concerns about piracy make DataPlay's timing auspicious, its opportunity is passing quickly.
Prices of flash memory chips and hard drives are plummeting while their capacities double every year.
Within a few years, a fully rewritable 512-Mb CompactFlash card will sell for about the same amount as a DataPlay disk and engine cost today.
The labels' support and the company's engineering breakthroughs give DataPlay a significant head start in what some analysts see as a race for the next great format. Said Jim Porter, an analyst for Disk/Trend Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., "If this gets done on schedule, with perceived reliability and at the right cost, then Steve Volk has a huge winner."
WSJ'S MOSSBERG GIVES DATAPLAY A THUMBS DOWN FOR NOW
April 18, 2002
PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
Complex Software, Copying Limits
Make DataPlay Too Much Trouble
The high-tech industry is always coming out with products that are smaller, yet have high capacity and cool features. But not every little marvel succeeds in the marketplace. The way it's deployed, the price, the marketing -- all of these can trip up even the teeniest technology. For instance, Sony's little MiniDiscs have gained only a small foothold in the U.S., while larger recordable CDs have surged.
I've been testing the latest little marvel that will try to take the world by storm but may have a tough time doing so. It's a new kind of disk that's smaller than a Saltine cracker yet holds 500 megabytes of data -- the equivalent of 357 floppy disks and 75% as much as a CD-ROM. Each of these tiny rewritable wafers, called DataPlay disks, can hold hours of music, hundreds of photos and other data.
DataPlay Disk
Not only that, but the company says that in early June, record labels are due to start releasing a few albums in the DataPlay format, including titles by David Gray, Britney Spears and 'N Sync. Each prerecorded disk contains not only the album itself, but also previews of a second album, which can be unlocked online for a bargain price. Each album will also contain videos, photos, lyrics and even, in some cases, games. And there will be room left over to add your own MP3 songs and nonmusic files.
That's the good news. The bad news is that you need special hardware and software to play DataPlay disks. Starting next month, DataPlay drives will be available for $300 and up. They are small, hand-held units that double as PC accessories and as portable music players. Cheaper drives that merely read and write to the disks, but don't play music, may show up eventually at around $200. Also, blank DataPlay disks cost much more than blank CDs -- between $5 and $12 each, depending on how many you buy at a time, compared with less than a dollar for blank recordable CDs.
But the biggest downside of the new DataPlay format is that it is the first format for prerecorded music that's designed from the ground up with a copy-protection system that will severely limit the way honest consumers can use the music they buy.
At least at first, you won't be able to copy any of the music to a PC, or burn it onto a CD for use in a CD player. And even copies to blank DataPlay disks will be limited by rules written onto the disks by the record labels. For instance, with a David Gray album I tested, each song can only be copied to another DataPlay disk five times, curbing the number of "mix" disks you can make. Copying of prerecorded songs to a PC is expected to be possible later this year but will be governed by the same limitations.
I tested the DataPlay disks with a $369 player that will carry the MTV brand and is made by Evolution Technologies. The player has a slot on the side for the disks and a small screen that shows song information and other data. In portable mode, unconnected from a PC, it played music fine, though the user interface was complex and technical. DataPlay says the interface will be cleaned up by the time the player is commercially available in late May.
When I hooked the MTV player up to a PC, using an included USB cable, it became a disk drive for the DataPlay disks. Using special software that came with the drive, I was able to copy all sorts of files to blank disks, and to the blank space on prerecorded disks. I then hooked the player up to a second PC and was able to transfer my own files -- though not any precorded music -- to the second PC.
Installation of the necessary software was a pain. Five sets of programs and drivers needed to be installed, including one that creates a file system for the disks. To copy files to the disk, you drag them to the disk's icon, though you have to "record" the files, using a special utility, before the disk can be ejected.
Music on the disks can be played through your PC's speakers, but only if you use a special music program called Future Player, which is designed to handle the encrypted files. This player allows you to add your own MP3 files to a DataPlay disk, but it encrypts them so they, too, can only be played using the Future Player.
In my view, the benefits of the small size and high capacity of the DataPlay format don't outweigh its downsides. The players and disks are expensive if you just want to store and transfer files. And anyone using it as a music medium is giving up most of his legal rights to copy music for convenient use. DataPlay may be a record label's dream format, but at least in its first iteration, it's not great for consumers
Encoding 101 - Tips, Tricks & Techniques for Video Compression
The first part of this session will give you an overview of some of the codecs available today, including Real Producer Plus, Microsoft’s Windows Media Encoding Utility 8, Sorenson Video 3 for Apple’s QuickTime, On2 Technologies' VP5, and DivX 5.0, and will give you insider tips, tricks and techniques that will help you squeeze the best results from each. The last section will allow for Q&A with the experts that know the technology best and can help you solve your most vexing compression problems.
Speakers
Francesco Schiavon, Moderator, QuickTime Expert / Instructor - Interactive Production, Vancouver Film School
Derek Smithwick, Systems Evangelist, RealNetworks
Jerome Rota, Co-Founder, DivXNetworks
Doug Werner, Webslinger, Apple
John Green, Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Wednesday, April 24, 2002
2:10 PM - 3:00 PM
Track 3
http://www.streamingmedia.com/west/program/session.asp?id=456