C-Cube Initiates Era of Affordable Consumer Digital Video Recordable Products; New Chip Brings Broadcast Quality and Consumer-Level Pricing to Digital Video Recording Market.

Business Editors, High-Tech Writers

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 3, 2000

C-Cube Microsystems (Nasdaq: CUBE) today announced a low-cost chip for the consumer digital video market that will power a new generation of affordable, high-quality digital video recording systems for the home.

The chip, C-Cube's DVxcel(TM) MPEG-2 CODEC, takes on the task of simultaneously recording and playing back (encoding and decoding) broadcast quality video in Digital Video Recorder (DVR) devices. It also encodes and decodes video at broadcast quality for DVD/optical disk and D-VHS recorders.

"Simultaneous encode/decode of broadcast quality video is key for the DVR market," said Patrick Henry, vice president of marketing and system solutions for C-Cube's Home Media Division. "We uniquely perform this task on a single chip, enabling the consumer electronic industry's lowest system cost for implementing a DVR product."

Simultaneous Encode and Decode

Simultaneous encode and decode is required in DVR devices to give consumers the ability to fast forward, rewind, pause, slow motion and instant replay live television broadcasts. C-Cube is the only company with MPEG-2 CODEC (encoder/decoder) solutions capable of performing this function.

Broadcast Quality Results

With DVxcel, consumers gain the full benefit of C-Cube's ten years experience in developing compression algorithms for the broadcast, DVD authoring and video production markets.

DVxcel leverages the PerfectView(TM) MPEG-2 compression algorithm that is in C-Cube's DVxpert(TM) and DVxpress(TM) broadcast and video production CODEC solutions. PerfectView is the de facto standard for MPEG-2 compression in the broadcast industry and is used by such leading broadcast system manufacturers as DiviCom, General Instrument, NDS and Scientific Atlanta. In the video production industry, leading players Avid, FAST, Matrox and Pinnacle have also adopted PerfectView based solutions.

DVxcel provides high-quality, single-pass variable bit rate encoding. For the consumer digital recordable market, this ability to record video at varying bitrates allows users to record at anywhere from 1.8 to10 megabits per second depending on the desired balance of quality and record time. Consumers can record up to 4 hours on a DVD disk, over 10 hours on a 10GB hard drive and up to 50 hours on D-VHS tape. At each given bit rate level, DVxcel optimizes the image quality while efficiently compressing the video to the requested file size.

Builds on Innovation of DVxplore

DVxcel expands on the engineering innovation of C-Cube's DVxplore(TM) MPEG-2 and DV CODEC. DVxplore is in production with JVC and NEC for D-VHS and optical disk recorders respectively. A DVD-RAM recorder based on DVxplore was demonstrated by Samsung at the Korean Electronics Show in October. DVxplore is a 0.25-micron PCI-based solution and is the world's first consumer MPEG-2 CODEC to allow simultaneous encode/decode.

DVxcel Advances to 0.22 Micron, Conventional Host Interface

A 0.22-micron solution, DVxcel incorporates a flexible host bus architecture that connects easily to both 16 and 32-bit embedded processors. DVxcel also integrates separate bitstream I/O (input/ouput) ports for direct connections to peripherals. Combined, these attributes can save significant system cost in design by eliminating extra logic between chips. They also reduce the computational load on the system processor, freeing it up for more advanced applications such as graphics and EPG (Electronic Programming Guide).

Availability and Pricing

DVxcel is sampling to consumer electronics manufacturers this month and will begin shipping in volume by the second quarter of 2000. DVxcel is priced at $29 in high-volume production quantities.

About C-Cube

C-Cube Microsystems Inc. is the industry leader in the development and delivery of highly integrated digital video silicon and systems solutions. C-Cube's Semiconductor Division delivers digital video silicon and systems solutions for the communications and consumer electronics markets. C-Cube's DiviCom Division is a leader in the deployment of digital video networks. C-Cube is headquartered in Milpitas, California with offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. Its stock is traded on the Nasdaq under the symbol CUBE. C-Cube can be reached at +1.408.490.8000 or at http://www.c-cube.com. C-Cube's DiviCom Division is based in Milpitas, Calif. and can be reached at +1.408.944.6700 or at http://www.divi.com.

C-Cube and the C-Cube logo are registered trademarks of C-Cube Microsystems, Inc. DiviCom is a registered trademark of DiviCom, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.