Rockwell Digital Camera Processor Chip Caps Complete Low-cost Solution for Desktop PC Video On PCI Bus.NEWPORT BEACH Newport Beach, residential and resort city (1990 pop. 66,643), Orange co., S Calif., on Newport Bay and the Pacific Ocean; inc. 1906. It is a popular seaside resort and yachting center. Manufactures include electrical and medical equipment, computers, boats, and adhesives. , Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 27, 1998--Bt832 Video Processor Mates Rockwell's CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) Pronounced "c-moss." The most widely used integrated circuit design. It is found in almost every electronic product from handheld devices to mainframes. Digital Camera to Company's Fusion Video Decoder Chips for Complete, Sub-$99 Desktop PC Video Products Using High-performance PCI Bus Rockwell Semiconductor Systems Monday introduced a new digital camera processor chip for use with the company's QuartzSight CMOS digital camera and Fusion family of PCI (1) (Payment Card Industry) See PCI DSS. (2) (Peripheral Component Interconnect) The most widely used I/O bus (peripheral bus). decoder chips. The Bt832 camera processor chip generates the industry's lowest-cost camera-capture solution for video conferencing, video email and video editing applications, and enables OEMs to create a board-level product including camera that can reach the coveted cov·et v. cov·et·ed, cov·et·ing, cov·ets v.tr. 1. To feel blameworthy desire for (that which is another's). See Synonyms at envy. 2. To wish for longingly. See Synonyms at desire. $99 retail price point. Rockwell's Bt832 camera processor chip provides camera image processing and automatic exposure and color balancing control capabilities, and supports frame rates up to 30 frames-per-second (fps) with crisp, clear CIF (1) (Common Intermediate Format) A standard video format used in videoconferencing. CIF formats are defined by their resolution, and standards both above and below the original resolution have been established. The original CIF is also known as Full CIF (FCIF). (352x288-pixel) and QCIF See CIF. QCIF - Quarter CIF (176x144-pixel) image sizes. Although the Bt832 can be used to integrate the QuartzSight camera into any multimedia subsystem (including sideport video decoders, graphics controllers and 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). II devices that support a CCIR See ITU. 656 input port), it has been optimized for use with Rockwell's Fusion family of PCI video decoders. "The availability of compelling video-dependent software applications has created a rapidly growing market for high-performance PCI-based video solutions which turn the PC into a robust video, communications and entertainment platform as envisioned by companies like Microsoft and Intel," said John Graham, director of marketing for Rockwell's Digital Infotainment Division. "A key initiative of Rockwell's Digital Infotainment Division has been to make high-quality video easy to integrate on the PCI bus. Our new Bt832 digital camera processor chip is a key element in our offering. Together, our camera processor chip, PCI decoder solution and digital camera can now be used to create products with retail prices in the $99 to $159 range that used to cost from $200 to $350. With this quality at these price points, we are offering the opportunity for a whole new world of exciting video-based applications for home and business." "Rockwell offers one of the most feature rich CMOS camera solutions to date," said Joseph Kwok, director of software engineering at Acer Advanced Labs. "QuartzSight on the PCI bus is ideal for video conferencing, video capture, video messaging and personal video editing, and plays a key role in dramatically enhancing what our customers can do with their Acer computer systems. Or bundled with Acer's EasyAxcess video conferencing software, QuartzSight is a low cost video capture card See video capture board. that is field upgradeable to the latest software in video capture, video messaging, and video personal video editing." Rockwell's Digital Infotainment Division is a leading pioneer in PCI-based video and communication technologies that marry high-quality video decoding and scaling capabilities with sophisticated PCI bus-mastering techniques. The company's proven Bt848A video-capture device was the first of its kind to use an intelligent 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. engine and high-performance PCI bus master module to enable a direct connection to the PCI bus. This eliminated the need for a separate connection to the PC's graphics controller, and enabled superior video scaling plus overlay support that is not limited by the frame buffer size. Rockwell's second-generation Fusion family extends this platform by also capturing broadcast TV audio and stereo FM radio without the cabling and extra cost associated with previous architectures. Fusion lets users listen to a stereo radio broadcast, watch their favorite TV news program, send videomail, conduct videoconferences with friends and associates, or receive VBI See vertical blanking interval. data services like Teletext teletext: see videotex. A broadcasting service that transmits text to a TV set that has a teletext decoder. It uses the vertical blanking interval of the TV signal (black line between frames when vertical hold is not adjusted) to transmit about a hundred , Intel's Intercast and WavePhore's WaveTop. Fusion is easily integrated with the Bt832 and QuartzSight CMOS digital camera. QuartzSight offers a significantly more cost-effective solution than CCD CCD in full charge-coupled device Semiconductor device in which the individual semiconductor components are connected so that the electrical charge at the output of one device provides the input to the next device. analog cameras, and supports low-cost H.324 videoconferencing over analog phone lines, H.323 videoconferencing over LANs or the Internet, and other applications that require real-time video acquisition. QuartzSight delivers 24-bit full-color video at programmable variable frame rates with CIF or QCIF resolution, and its QuartzLink 9-pin interface can quickly be added to any PCI card. The Bt832 then takes RGB (Red Green Blue) The computer's native color space, which is the color system for capturing and displaying images. RGB was derived from our own perception of color because human eyes are sensitive to red, green and blue (see trichromaticity). data from the QuartzSight camera and preprocesses the data into a YCrCb format that is compliant with CCIR656 or the popular Video Input Port (VIP). The Bt832 also performs color restoration, gamma correction and color space conversion Changing one type of color-encoded signal into another. Converting from RGB to YUV and back to RGB are common color space conversions when working with video formats (see YUV). Converting from the display color space (RGB) to the printer color space (CMYK) is another common example. and, when used with Fusion, outputs a CCIR656 data stream to Fusion's PCI bus master. Other features of the Bt832 include programmability for adjusting QuartzSight's brightness, contrast, saturation, color gain, hue and gamma settings. The Bt832 also offers hardware-based automatic exposure control and color balance to offload these highly intensive camera image processing tasks from the host. The Bt832 is available now and is priced at $5.50 in OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) The rebranding of equipment and selling it. The term initially referred to the company that made the products (the "original" manufacturer), but eventually became widely used to refer to the organization that buys the products and quantities of 10,000. Rockwell's QuartzSight camera is also available now and is priced at $39 in OEM quantities of 10,000. Rockwell Semiconductor Systems and Electronic Commerce is based in Newport Beach. Rockwell Semiconductor Systems is a leading worldwide provider of semiconductor system solutions for personal communications electronics products used in personal computing, network access, personal imaging, wireless communications and digital infotainment. These product platforms offer a variety of technology convergence opportunities and each leverages the company's 30-year mixed-signal computing heritage in such key areas as signal-processing algorithms, signal conversion, and communications protocols. The Electronic Commerce Division, based in Wood Dale, Ill., is a leading supplier of call center systems and personalized electronic commerce applications software. For more information, visit the Rockwell Semiconductor Systems Web site at http://www.rss.rockwell.com/. Rockwell (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :ROK) is a global electronic controls and communications company with leadership positions in industrial automation, avionics and communications, and semiconductor systems with fiscal 1997 sales of approximately $8 billion and 48,000 employees. Rockwell's world headquarters is located in Costa Mesa in Orange County, Calif. CONTACT: Rockwell Semiconductor Systems, Newport Beach Eileen Algaze, 714/221-6849 eileen.algaze@rss.rockwell.com Literature and Product Contacts: U.S. 800/854-8099 International 714/221-6996 rockwell@salessupport.com or The Benjamin Group Inc. Carolyn Fromm or Lisa Thielmann, 714/245-7500 cfromm or lthielma@oc.tbgi.com |
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