Sigma Designs' REALmagic Dragon DVD Reference Design Provides OEMs with a Single-Chip, Low-Cost DVD Playback Solution for Home Entertainment PCs.MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 7, 1999-- Decoder Featured in PC Demonstrations at WinHEC 99 Sigma Designs, Inc. (Nasdaq:SIGM), a leader in digital video solutions for personal computers, announced the availability of its Dragon DVD DVD: see digital versatile disc. DVD in full digital video disc or digital versatile disc Type of optical disc. The DVD represents the second generation of compact-disc (CD) technology. reference design today. The new low-cost reference design is based on Sigma's REALmagic EM8220 decoder IC. The EM8220 is a single-chip solution for playing DVD, Super VCD See Video CD. VCD - Video Compact Disc , and VCD 1.0/2.0 video on a PC as well as audio CDs. With Dragon DVD, PC OEMs have a completely integrated solution that fully exploits the video quality supported by international DVD standards. Dragon DVD will be demonstrated at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference The Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) is the annual software developer-oriented trade show and business conference where Microsoft elaborates on its hardware plans for Microsoft Windows-compatible PCs. (WinHEC) 99, April 7-9, at the Los Angeles Convention Center The Los Angeles Convention Center (abbreviated LACC) is a convention center in downtown Los Angeles. The LACC hosts annual events such as the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show, and was best known to video games fans as host to E3 until its cessation in 2006. , Los Angeles, California in Sigma Designs' Booth No. 1014. With Dragon DVD, Sigma now offers two DVD playback solutions to the market. The award-winning EM8300-based Hollywood Plus card provides a rich feature set, including scaling, that has become the industry standard in the PC DVD upgrade market. Dragon DVD is targeted at OEMs desiring to provide a lower price point solution. Dragon DVD decoding produces full-screen images that are always clear, clean, and crisp. With full-screen NTSC/PAL TV output, users can play high-quality video on any standard TV set. "For a low-cost DVD playback solution for customers who want full-screen TV display for living room PC applications, Dragon DVD is a perfect product," explained William K. Wong, Sigma's vice president of marketing. "As the sub-$500 consumer PC market continues to grow, the demand for inexpensive, consumer-oriented DVD playback will increase." Turns PCs into a Full-Featured Video Player Dragon DVD plays DVD 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). titles with full-screen resolution. It also supports DVD-video playback of encrypted movie titles. To enhance the video experience, the Dragon DVD card has the same user interface as Hollywood Plus--Sigma Designs' DVD-Station software, a full-featured application that incorporates all of the DVD navigation and playback control features found in stand-alone consumer DVD players, including remote playback. DVD-Station has simple, VCR-like control buttons for choosing a video title or track; starting playback; pausing, and stopping. Users can seek forward and backward with variable speed visual search, slow motion, next and previous chapter track, search and title selection. DVD-Station also integrates DVD navigation features such as on-screen interactive menus and sub-picture controls and color/brightness/contrast controls for both VGA (Video Graphics Array) The display standard for the PC. All PC display adapters support VGA, and Windows machines boot up in "VGA mode" before switching to higher resolutions. and TV output. DVD control includes support for wide-screen, letterbox and pan & scan viewing aspect ratios, along with the selection of multiple camera angles. Users can select from up to eight language sound tracks and 32 subtitle settings. Further enhancing DVD-Station is REALmagic's Remote Control support, which enables the user to sit on the sofa while navigating the REALmagic Player, or DVD Station. Dragon DVD has an S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital InterFace) A serial interface for transferring digital audio from CD and DVD players to amplifiers and TVs. S/PDIF is typically used to transmit PCM and Dolby Digital 5.1, but is not tied to any sampling rate or audio standard. connector for AC-3 5.1 channel audio streams. MPEG audio decode and PCM audio playback at 48Khz, 96Khz and 16, 20 and 24 bits are also supported. When combined with an external AC-3 decoder and speakers, users can enjoy a full home theater experience from their PC. For TV-output, both composite and S/Video TV output are available for PAL/NTSC TV formats. The Dragon DVD design includes a unique frame rate conversion feature to play any PAL/NTSC title to any NTSC (National TV Standards Committee) The committee that developed the television standards for the U.S, which are also used in Canada, Japan, South Korea and several Central and South American countries. Both the committee and the standard are called "NTSC. or PAL TV; it also supports karaoke applications for home theater entertainment. DVD One-Stop Shopping Lung Hwa Electronics, Formosa Industrial Computing, Inc., Yuan Yuan, and Labway Corporation--leading providers of PC graphics, audio, and digital video-related cards to worldwide OEMs -- have announced that they will begin producing cards using the REALmagic EM8220 DVD decoder IC for some of their new decoder cards, as well as continuing production of the EM8300 DVD decoder for those customers requiring a full feature set. "Sigma Designs has been instrumental to our MPEG-2 product road map," commented Peter Pai, Chairman of Lung Hwa. "The availability of Sigma's silicon for two DVD decoding solutions will enable Lung Hwa to provide one-stop shopping for OEMs desiring a lower-cost as well as a full-featured DVD/MPEG-2 playback solution." "As a highly integrated, flexible, and cost-effective solution that is ideal for the PC upgrade market, we believe the EM8220 will help make DVD playback on PCs available and affordable," stated Austin Sun, President, Labway Corporation. "Sigma's decoder silicon enables video display quality superior to that found in a DVD player for a fraction of the cost," said Mr. Sharming Lin, Chairman 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 Formosa Industrial Computing. "The rapid adoption of DVD playback on the PC, with output to the TV, will enrich the life style of all consumers," said Michael Liu, Vice President of Yuan Yuan Enterprise Co., Ltd. "With REALmagic's Remote Control support, Sigma Designs has taken the DVD home theater experience to a new level." Compatibility, System Requirements Dragon DVD is a compact 4.7" x 3.6" card that ships with full driver support for Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 95/98 and NT 4.0 and is compatible with all CD-ROM CD-ROM: see compact disc. CD-ROM in full compact disc read-only memory Type of computer storage medium that is read optically (e.g., by a laser). , 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. , and DVD-RAM A rewritable DVD disc endorsed by the DVD Forum. Using phase change technology, DVD-RAMs are like removable hard disks, and the media can be rewritten 100,000 times compared to 1,000 times for DVD-RW and DVD+RW. The first DVD-RAM drives with a capacity of 2.6GB (single sided) or 5. drives. The REALmagic Dragon DVD reference design requires a PC with an Intel Pentium 133 MHz or higher 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. , 16 MB RAM, a PCI (1) (Payment Card Industry) See PCI DSS. (2) (Peripheral Component Interconnect) The most widely used I/O bus (peripheral bus). 2.1-compliant expansion slot, and Microsoft Windows 95/98 or NT 4.0. Other requirements include a video graphics controller with 2 MB video RAM. Dragon DVD requires only 2 MB SDRAM (Synchronous DRAM) A type of dynamic RAM (DRAM) memory chip that has been widely used since the late 1990s. SDRAM chips eliminated wait states by dividing the chip into two cell blocks and interleaving data between them. . Sigma's single-chip EM8220 decoder has a new companion device, the EM9038 analog multiplexor. Samples of the EM8220 and EM9038 are available, and both chips are in mass production now. The bill of materials The list of components that make up a system. For example, a bill of materials for a house would include the cement block, lumber, shingles, doors, windows, plumbing, electric, heating and so on. for the EM8220-based Dragon DVD card in quantities of 10,000 is under $35.00/unit (U.S.). About Sigma Designs Sigma Designs entered the multimedia market in 1993 with products based on the MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group (compression, standard, algorithm, file format, body) Moving Picture Experts Group - (MPEG, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29 WG11) An ISO committee that generates standards for digital video compression and audio. Also the name of their algorithms. ) standard for compressing and decompressing digital audio and video signals. Today, Sigma is a driving force in advancement of the MPEG technology used in most multimedia PCs on the market today. Sigma Designs' products, marketed under the REALmagic trade name, include affordable MPEG decoding hardware used in PCs, notebook computers, and networked video applications. Sigma products are sold to PC OEMs and card makers worldwide. For additional information, visit Sigma's web site at http://www.sigmadesigns.com. Note to Editors: REALmagic is a trademark and Sigma Designs is a registered trademark of Sigma Designs. Other products and companies referred to herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Editors and Analysts: For further information, photographs and interviews, please contact Andy Marken, marken@cerf.net or 408-986-0100. |
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