Boca Research Selects Zoran ZR36120 Chip for Desktop Video Conferencing Solution; Newest In Wave of Video Conferencing Design Wins.SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 15, 1996--Zoran Corporation (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on :ZRAN), a leading global supplier of video and audio solutions for the PC and consumer markets, announced today that Boca Research has selected Zoran's ZR36120 PCI (1) (Payment Card Industry) See PCI DSS. (2) (Peripheral Component Interconnect) The most widely used I/O bus (peripheral bus). controller for their low cost Boca Video Phone Classic. The board is selling for only $199 to end-users. The new Boca Video Phone is the industry's first video conferencing solution to use a DSP (1) (Digital Signal Processor) A special-purpose CPU used for digital signal processing applications (see definition #2 below). It provides ultra-fast instruction sequences, such as shift and add, and multiply and add, which are commonly used in math-intensive for G.723 audio compression using the H.324 POTS standard (Plain Old Telephone Service), while performing video compression functions in software. This will enable manufacturers to offer high quality audio in their video conferencing solutions, even when using low power CPU's. According to Zoran company officials, Boca is the most recent company to incorporate Zoran's ZR36120 PCI controller into its state-of-the-art desktop video conferencing solution. The solution is based on the EyeWay95 reference design and drivers developed by Zoran. "We're pleased to add the Boca Phone Classic to our list of video conferencing design wins," noted Zoran's vice president of sales and marketing, Isaac Shenberg. "We believe the ZR36120, the various reference designs, and Zoran's Windows 95 software drivers which have been shipping for six months, will continue to enable manufacturers like Boca to significantly reduce time-to-market and to bring compatible video phones and Internet phones to mainstream PCs." According to Boca Research's Video Products Manager, Gary Lemmons, Zoran's design expertise played a critical role in enabling Boca to be the first company to ship an advanced full G.723 audio video conferencing solution. The solution also uses the CT8020 audio DSP from DSP Group. "By securing a competitive reference design and mature software drivers from Zoran early in our development process, we were able to complete our product and launch it before the competition," noted Lemmons. From the development start, Zoran has worked intimately with a number of software companies that develops video conferencing applications, to optimize the overall system performance in H.324 and Internet communication. VDOnet corporation announced recently the VDOPhone software that provides the H.324 POTS standard as well as Internet conferencing with NetMeeting support. VDOnet cooperated with Zoran to develop the Eyeway95 software architecture and the first to develop a full H.324 video conferencing application leveraging the video and audio capabilities of the Zoran's solution. "We elected to support early on the Zoran Eyeway95 design because its DMA (1) (Digital Media Adapter) See digital media hub. (2) (Document Management Alliance) A specification that provides a common interface for accessing and searching document databases. video transfer capability enabled us to provide a higher performance solution," said Asaf Mohr, President and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of VDOnet. The VideoLink from Smith Micro Software is another recently announced H.324 application that takes advantage of the audio DSP's capabilities and also bundled with the Boca Video Phone. "Smith Micro found it very helpful to work closely with Zoran and support the ZR36120 reference designs and software drivers with their video capture and audio compression functionality," said Dan Budge, General Manager of Smith Micro's Video Products Division. "The Zoran solutions enable us to demo our H.324 technology without requiring as high of a speed PC as our competition." Zoran reports that its ZR36120 and software drivers have already been used by other partners of Zoran to develop additional reference designs. In September, Analog devices announced their ADSP ADSP - AppleTalk Data Stream Protocol 2181 based PCI board for video conferencing, called iCOM H.32X, developed jointly with MediaSonic. It is available now with an H.324 application and can be upgraded by software only to support LAN (Local Area Network) A communications network that serves users within a confined geographical area. The "clients" are the user's workstations typically running Windows, although Mac and Linux clients are also used. H.323 and ISDN ISDN in full Integrated Services Digital Network Digital telecommunications network that operates over standard copper telephone wires or other media. H.320. Mike Haidar, General Manager of Analog Devices Systems and Software explained that the design and software drivers developed by Zoran enabled Analog Devices to create its own competitive reference design for desktop video conferencing in a very short time. "We believe the market is ready now for video conferencing architectures with audio compression in hardware and video in software, and the iCOM H.324 solution is what Analog Devices customers had been waiting for," stated Haidar. For computer manufacturers that plan to rely on the power of a high speed CPU CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digital computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. to execute the audio as well as video compression, in order to lower system costs, Zoran has developed a low cost reference design, the EyeWay95-Lite. It includes only video capture circuitry with components cost of less than $25 for OEMs. The VDOPhone and VideoLink applications support this low cost solution, as well as many other software applications such as the LivePhone from PictureTel and CU-SeeMe from White Pine. The board is especially appealing for Internet conferencing and is already available from VideoLabs, MediaSonic, Digital Vision, and other manufacturers. The Virgo PCI reference design, which was announced last month by Zoran and Silicon Vision, is another low cost video capture only solution. This two-chip board interfaces the PCI bus directly to the iVision digital camera. All the software applications mentioned above and any other Video For Windows The name of Microsoft's first video playback implementation in Windows. Supporting the AVI movie format, Video for Windows (VfW) was installed separately in Windows 3.x, but was later built into Windows 95 and subsequent versions. applications are supported by the Virgo. "We found the ZR36120 the most cost effective solution to bring video from our iVision digital camera into the PCI bus, and have many customers already line up to use this solution," said Rudi Wiedemann, President and CEO of Silicon Vision. The ZR36120 PCI controller is used for other multimedia applications such as video capture, TV on PC, MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) An ISO/ITU standard for compressing digital video. Pronounced "em-peg," it is the universal standard for digital terrestrial, cable and satellite TV, DVDs and digital video recorders (DVRs). playback, AC-3 acceleration and DVD-ROM DVD-ROM: see digital versatile disc. A read-only DVD disc used to permanently store data files. DVD-ROM discs are widely used to distribute large software applications that exceed the capacity of a CD-ROM disc. decoding. Zoran will demonstrate a wide range of these solutions next week at the COMDEX The former, premier computer trade show in the U.S. Although it grew into an end user event, it was originally created for dealers and distributors (it was the COMputer Dealers EXposition). trade show in Las Vegas, Booth no. S7935. All Zoran partners mentioned will also have their solution demonstrated in COMDEX. For more information about Zoran, call (408) 986-1314. Zoran's web site: www.zoran.com will be opened later this month. About Zoran Corporation Zoran Corporation (NASDAQ:ZRAN) develops and markets integrated circuits and software for digital video and audio applications enabled by compression. Zoran's product line includes JPEG JPEG in full Joint Photographic Experts Group Standard computer file format for storing graphic images in a compressed form for general use. JPEG images are compressed using a mathematical algorithm. codecs The following is a list of codecs. Audio codecs Non-compression formats
The company's integrated circuits are used in a variety of video and audio products addressing growing consumer multimedia markets. Current applications for Zoran products include professional and consumer video editing systems, PC-based and stand-alone video CD systems, DVD-ROM and stand-alone players, digital audio systems, filmless digital cameras and desktop video conferencing. Established in 1983, the company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California Santa Clara, California (IPA: /ˌsæntəˈklærə/) , founded in 1777 and incorporated in 1852, is a city in Santa Clara County, in the U.S. state of California. and has operations in Haifa, Israel. -0- Note to Editors: ZR36120, EyeWay95 and EyeWay95-Lite are trademarks of Zoran Corporation. All other trademarks and product names are the property of their respective companies. CONTACT: Zoran Corp. Elisha Caspary, 011/+972 4-854-5777 elisha@zoran.co.il Dave Fronczak, 408/986-1314 davef@zoran.com or MCA MCA in full Music Corporation of America Entertainment conglomerate. It was founded in Chicago in 1924 by Jules Stein as a talent agency. In the 1960s it bought Decca Records and Universal Pictures, and today it produces films, music, and television shows. , Inc. Carey Mitchell, 415/968-8900 carey@mcapr.com or FRB See Federal Reserve Board. , Investor Contact Bonnie McBride, 415/986-1591 btm@sf.frbd.com |
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