Industry's First HDTV Decoder Chips With MPEG-4 Launched by Sigma Designs.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

2003 International CES

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 8, 2003

New decoder family with unique features for next generation

digital TV already adopted by e-BOX, National Semiconductor and

Toshiba

Sigma Designs, Inc. (Nasdaq:SIGM), a leader in IP video streaming solutions, announced today the industry's first family of integrated high-definition television (HDTV) decoder chips to support MPEG-4, marking the company's formal entry into the digital TV and media gateway markets. Sigma's new EM8605 and EM8610 decoder chips offer a high performance architecture that supports digital TV, DVD, video-on-demand (VOD) and personal video recording (PVR) applications. Sigma Designs will showcase its EM8605 in their demonstration suite at this week's CES show in Las Vegas.

High definition television and advanced CODEC technologies are expected to top consumer electronics trends for the next several years. Driven in the U.S. market by an FCC mandate and a major cable industry proposal, digital televisions offering both ATSC and cable compatible interfaces are expected to appear on retail shelves near the end of this year. In turn, high definition video, which occupies four to six times the bandwidth of standard video, is driving subscription video service providers to use more efficient CODEC technologies to maintain a full complement of channels. MPEG-4 provides this alternative and has been adopted by the e-BOX company, a joint venture led by Pioneer and Sharp with plans to execute field trials at Comcast during the first half of this year. Today, the majority of new MPEG-4 consumer appliances are based on chipsets offered by Sigma Designs.

"MPEG-4 is a technology that is being deployed today to generate new revenues from bandwidth-limited applications that cannot be supported by MPEG-2," said Ken Lowe, vice president of strategic marketing at Sigma Designs. "As a leader in advanced CODEC technologies, Sigma introduced the first set-top decoder solution for MPEG-4 a year ago, which has been designed into new consumer appliances by over 20 independent companies."

Designing Media Gateways and Advanced Set-top Boxes Using the EM8605

Sigma's new EM8605 was designed as a full function PCI-based media processor, operating in conjunction with a high performance embedded CPU to match the requirements of a next generation media gateway or advanced set-top box. The EM8605 features high definition decoding, multi-stream video decoding in MPEG-4, MPEG-2, or MPEG-1 formats, multi-stream audio decoding, 2D graphics acceleration, transport stream handling with CSS (DVD) decryption, and advanced display processing. Advanced set-top boxes supporting HDTV and MPEG-4 along with a flexible set of interactive applications will ideally benefit from the EM8605's rich feature set.

Media gateways represent the next level for home entertainment, providing a scalable solution for processing multiple media types, external broadband communications and internal home connectivity. Typical functions include digital TV reception, broadband Internet access, DVD playback, personal video recording, video-on-demand and home networking. As most households have more than one TV, this architecture can offer a more economical overall solution by adding simple, low-cost video endpoints to service additional televisions. The EM8605 uniquely provides the complete range of hardware and software features required to support all of the media processing needs required in a media gateway.

Designing Multi-function Consumer Appliances Using the EM8610

Manufacturers of DVD players, television sets and other consumer equipment are steadily moving toward multi-function devices that offer a wider range of digital media based features. With the proliferation of new standards, file formats and downloaded media from the Internet, users are now demanding more universal media support for video, audio and photographic images. This includes playback of MPEG-4 based movies offered by companies such as DivX Video (tm), listening to music downloaded as MP3 or Windows Media Audio (WMA) and viewing JPEG-based digital photographs in high resolution. Following this trend, advanced DVD players are adding network connectivity, local hard disk storage with PVR functionality and in some cases digital TV reception.

Sigma's new EM8610 was designed as a stand-alone system-on-chip solution for multi-function consumer appliances and digital televisions. The EM8610 offers an on-chip RISC processor, PCI-bus hosting, and IDE controller along with the same media processing functions as the EM8605 to enable highly efficient designs for systems supporting the widest range of digital video/audio features. Configured with standard tuners and front-end components, the EM8610 provides a full-featured solution for next generation digital televisions, with unique display processing features for both flat panel and direct view displays.

Delivering Top Quality Video Output

The EM86xx family of media processors offers unparalleled quality of video and audio processing. Video decoding capabilities include MPEG-4, MPEG-2 and MPEG-1 compressed video formats while audio decoding includes Dolby(R) Digital (AC3), AAC, Windows Media Audio (WMA) and MPEG-1 Layers I, II and III (MP3) and MPEG-2 BC Layers I and II. MPEG-4 video support is based on the advanced simple profile at full DVD resolution. Any form of decoded content can be output in either progressive or interlaced format. Also supported is Picture CD (JPEG) format for viewing digital photo content, which provides a substantially enhanced image when utilizing the high definition output. For supporting a robust graphical user interface and interactive applications, the EM86xx family offers a full 2D graphics accelerator capable of bit-blt operations at 75 megapixels per second, separate on-screen-display, and selectable flicker filtering.

Beyond the decoding and rendering process, the EM86xx family of media processors also provides the most advanced display processing features available, which recreate many elements of cinema picture quality. The family of parts is based on a unique architectural approach to mixing multiple video and graphics sources together with arbitrary scaling and conversion while also supporting multiple television outputs. Two separate video sources plus accelerated graphics, OSD, and hardware cursor elements are scan converted, scaled, and mixed together in real time to support complex screen composition. Dual video and audio stream processing along with two independent television outputs enable the use of multiple TVs, or a TV and video recorder combination. Additionally, the chip offers composite and S-video TV outputs, interlaced or progressive analog component video outputs (YPbPr or RGB).

Industry Adoption by e-BOX, National and Toshiba

At the time of this announcement, several companies are already moving forward with set-top box designs based on the EM8605 decoder chips from Sigma, including e-BOX Corporation, National Semiconductor and Toshiba.

e-BOX corporation, formed in March 2002 to develop the next generation system for advanced cable services based on MPEG-4, is developing a set-top box based on the Sigma EM8605. The e-BOX solution supports HDTV, VOD with the look-and-feel of DVD and PVR, all in one low cost set-top box.

National Semiconductor has been in partnership with Sigma Designs for several years, having jointly established more than 40 set-top box customers designs based on their Geode(TM) embedded x86 technology. National is now in the process of developing new products for the high definition digital set-top box market, based on Sigma's EM8605 HDTV decoder and other advanced technologies from National. Together, National and Sigma anticipate introducing a new set-top box reference design to the marketplace during the second quarter of this year.

"National will continue working closely with Sigma to develop advanced set-top box solutions for digital TV, video-on-demand, and media-centric applications," said Mike Polacek, vice president of the Information Appliance Division, National Semiconductor Corporation. "The new reference platform will provide our customers with a compelling solution for the development of HDTV applications."

Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC) has been working with Sigma Designs on the development of a series of new home entertainment gateway reference designs, based on their TMPR7901A 64-bit super-scaler MIPS instruction processor. The first reference design, using Sigma's EM8475 MPEG-4 decoder chip, was successfully demonstrated by Toshiba at Japan's CREATEC show in October. Toshiba intends to introduce a higher performance platform based on Sigma's EM8605 HDTV decoder during the first half of this year.

"As part of Toshiba America Electronic Components (TAEC) overall development of configurable, leading-edge reference platforms for Residential Gateways, set-top boxes and other applications, we are very pleased to announce the new collaboration between TAEC and Sigma Designs. This will enable us to develop platforms based on the high-performance, highly integrated Toshiba/ArTile TX7901/A MIPS-based RISC processor and Sigma Designs' advance EM8605 high-definition decoder. This development complements our existing platform, which is based on the Toshiba/ArTile TX4927/TX7901 MIPS-based RISC processors and the Sigma Designs' EM8475 MPEG-4 decoder," said Farhad Mafie, vice president of the ASSP Business Unit at Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc.

Availability

The EM8605 and EM8610 decoder chips will be sold through Sigma's direct sales force. Samples will be available in March with production scheduled for June.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward looking statements, including statements about the projected timing and extent of customer shipments as well as the expected use of Sigma's MPEG decoder products in the rollout. Actual results could vary from those projected in the forward looking statements as a result of various factors, including worldwide economic conditions, changes in the customer's ability or desire to complete the roll-out, consumer reaction to the new products and services being offered, the ability of Sigma to deliver sufficient quantity and quality of MPEG decoder chips, prices for the Sigma chips, alternative offerings by competitors, and the ability of the parties to work together successfully to achieve the rollout.

About Sigma Designs, Inc.

Sigma Designs specializes in silicon-based MPEG decoding for streaming video, progressive DVD playback and advanced digital set-top boxes. The company's award-winning REALmagic(R) Video Streaming Technology is used in both commercial and consumer applications providing highly integrated solutions for high-quality decoding of MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. Headquartered in Milpitas, Calif., the company also has sales offices in China, Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. For more information, please visit the company's web site at www.sigmadesigns.com/.

REALmagic(R) is a registered trademark of Sigma Designs, Inc. Other product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

About TAEC

Combining quality and flexibility with design engineering expertise,

TAEC brings a breadth of advanced, next-generation technologies to its customers. This broad offering includes semiconductors, flash memory-based storage solutions, optical communication devices, displays and rechargeable batteries for the computing, wireless, networking, automotive and digital consumer markets.

TAEC is an independent operating company owned by Toshiba America, Inc., a subsidiary of Toshiba, the second largest semiconductor company worldwide in terms of global sales for the year 2001 according to Gartner/Dataquest's Worldwide Semiconductor Market Share Ranking. Toshiba is a world leader in high-technology products with more than 300 major subsidiaries and affiliates worldwide. For additional company and product information, please visit TAEC's web site at gateway.toshiba.com. For technical inquiries, please e-mail [e-mail].