Sigma Designs Launches REALMagic Ventura DVD/MPEG-2 Playback Board Specifically for PC OEM Manufacturers; DVD/MPEG-2 Decoder Card Brings Low-Cost, Uncompromising DVD Playback Quality and Easy Integration Into Latest Generation Multimedia PCs.

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 15, 1997--Sigma Designs Inc. (NASDAQ:SIGM), a recognized leader in digital video solutions for personal computers, today announced its REALmagic Ventura DVD MPEG-2 playback card.

Providing a full-featured yet low-cost solution for OEMs to include full DVD/MPEG-2 capability in systems, the new decoder card integrates all DVD/MPEG-2 functions into a single PCI board.

"Sigma is continuing to leverage its technical expertise in DVD/MPEG-2 to meet the changing needs of this very dynamic market," commented Prem Talreja, Sigma Designs' vice president of marketing. "We expect that the Ventura DVD board will meet the needs of PC OEMs just as our award-winning Hollywood DVD board continues to gain acceptance in the upgrade kit market."

Sigma's first DVD board, the REALmagic Hollywood, was recently named "The Best Digital Video Player at COMDEX Canada '97" and awarded the Editor's Choice award by "The Computer Paper."

The new DVD decoder card, specifically for PC manufacturers, is designed to mate with many of the popular VGA graphics cards via a digital video output connector, thus reducing overall system integration cost. REALmagic Ventura supports all popular digital multimedia interfaces including ATI's AMC, nVidia's Video Port, S3's LPB, and VMI Rev 1.4 interface used by Cirrus Logic, Trident and others.

The Ventura board reduces size and cost by using a new single chip DVD/MPEG-2 decoder with an integrated PCI bus interface and implements all DVD navigation features in hardware including sub-picture and sub-titles with alpha blending. At a size of 6 x 3.3 inches, the Ventura board is one of the smallest boards on the market.

The Ventura DVD/MPEG-2 card includes Sigma Designs' DVD-Station software, a full-featured application that incorporates all the DVD Navigation and Playback Control features found in stand-alone consumer DVD players. DVD-Station features simple VCR-like control buttons to choose video title, track, playback, pause, stop, 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 like On-Screen interactive menus and sub-picture controls, multiple camera angles, multiple audio language track and sub-titles display selection.

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. Regional copy protection, as well as analog and digital CSS-compliant copy protection are supported.

"DVD clearly represents a dramatic increase in the capability of the home entertainment PC by totally immersing the user in a superior home theater environment," added Talreja. "The capacity and quality associated with DVD and with advanced PC playback systems like REALmagic Hollywood and Ventura will continue to contribute to the explosive growth of the PC-DVD market."

REALmagic Ventura supports DVD-video playback of encrypted movie titles and plays MPEG-2 DVD-ROM, MPEG-1, and Video CD 2.0 interactive titles with fully resizable video windows from thumbnail to full frame 1280x1024.

For the total home theater DVD experience, REALmagic Ventura provides NTSC/PAL S-Video and composite-TV output enabling the end user to watch full-screen DVD video directly on their television sets.

The digital audio decoding supports Dolby Digital, MPEG-2, and PCM 48 KHz and 96 KHz, 16-bit, 20-bit, and 24-bit audio playback. To support the latest home theater quality an optional digital audio output is available via a S/PDIF connector.

REALmagic Ventura requires a PC with an Intel Pentium 133 MHz or higher CPU, 16 MB RAM, PCI 2.1-compliant expansion slot, and Microsoft Windows 95. A video graphics controller with VPM-compatible digital video input multimedia connector, 2 MB video RAM (4 MB recommended), digital YUV 4:2:2 video overlay support for 720x480 MPEG-2 frame, and integrated video scalar with linear X-Y scaling is required. A Sound Blaster 16 or compatible sound card is also required.

REALmagic Ventura is sampling to OEM customers and will be in production in Q4 97.

About Sigma Designs

Sigma Designs entered the multimedia market in 1993 with products based on the MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) standard for compressing and decompressing digital audio and video signals. Since then, Sigma has been a driving force behind advancement of the MPEG technology used in most multimedia products on the market today.

Sigma Design's products include affordable MPEG video and audio encoding and decoding hardware and the industry's richest line of MPEG software titles. All Sigma Designs' products are sold worldwide through a network of dealers, distributors and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

For additional information, call 800/845-8086, 510/770-0100, fax: [phone], or visit Sigma's web site at http://www.sigmadesigns.com . -0-

REALmagic is a trademark of Sigma Designs. Pentium is a trademark of Intel Corp. Dolby Digital is a trademark of Dolby Laboratories Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

CONTACT: Sigma Designs Inc. (IR contact)

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S&S Public Relations Inc. (media contact)

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