New Zoran JPEG Chip Set Brings Broad Range of Video Applications to Consumer Multimedia PCs

Business Wire, April 28, 1997

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 28, 1997--Zoran Corporation (NASDAQ: ZRAN) announced today a new chip set that will enable PC OEMs to bring broadcast quality video to the desktop at mass market prices. The ZR36060 Integrated JPEG Processor and ZR36067 Video PCI Controller leverage Zoran's leadership position in JPEG and PCI bus technology to provide the low cost, high performance video capture, compression and playback capabilities required to make movie making, frame grabbing, Internet/LAN/POTS video conferencing and Internet video authoring widely available on the PC.

"Zoran has been a pioneer in the desktop video market by providing JPEG codec solutions to industry leaders such as Avid, Fast, Matrox, miro, Truevision, and others, and is fully committed to the advancement of video technology on the PC," said Levy Gerzberg, president and CEO of Zoran Corporation.

"The ZR36060 Integrated JPEG Codec, along with the ZR36067 Video PCI Controller and support software packages, will enable OEMs to offer the next generation of multimedia PCs at consumer prices."

The ability to provide low-cost, high quality video capture, compression and playback is the key to a host of exciting multimedia applications. After capture and compression, video may be stored for editing or may be sent over the Internet as a video stream or as video mail. Alternatively, the video may be distributed on CD ROMs, removable hard drives, or other media. Video playback will be facilitated by software decoders from Zoran, making this capability available to a large numbers of PC users.

According to Greg Sheppard from Dataquest, "Adding high performance video functionalities to the PC is the next natural step in the multimedia PC industry. This will bring the real meaning of multimedia to the PC market. The main obstacles of incorporating decent quality video into the PC have been the bandwidth bottleneck, CPU performance, disk sizes and the additional cost of the video sub-system. The improvements in PC technology in the last few years have provided the possibility of adding high quality video capabilities to the PC. The introduction of low-cost systems, such as the one introduced by Zoran, are expected to accelerate the proliferation of the multimedia PC."

"Miro has used the Zoran JPEG chip-sets in its award winning systems - the miroVIDEO DC20, miroVIDEO DC30, and miroVIDEO DC10," said Oliver Hoheisel, vice president product management of miro corporation. "The new Zoran JPEG solution will enable us to expand our customer base by providing a high-quality video solution at lower prices."

"Zoran's industry leading JPEG technology has been a key component in many of our high-quality video editing products for the past several years," said Lorne Trottier, president of Matrox Corporation. "The new ZR36060 provided us with a more integrated, lower cost solution that enabled us to launch our new Rainbow Runner product into the consumer market."

The ZR36060 - Integrated JPEG Processor

The ZR36060 is a high-performance, low-power, integrated JPEG codec. The ZR36060 integrates the functions of the ZR36050, Zoran's previous generation of JPEG codec, the ZR36015 Raster-to-Block Converter, and a 2x32Kx8 SRAM strip buffer into a single device. The ZR36060 is Zoran's fourth generation of field proven JPEG devices. Similar to Zoran's previous generation devices, the ZR36060 is fully compliant with the JPEG baseline standard and incorporates Zoran's patented bit rate control mechanism for maintaining the compressed code data at a constant bit rate. Incorporation of the bit rate control feature has been proven to be a crucial necessity for reliable, high-quality JPEG PC add-in boards. Available in a 100-pin PQFP package, the ZR36060 operates at 3.3 volts, meeting PCMCIA and CardBus requirements.

The ZR36067 - Video PCI Controller

The ZR36067 is a PCI bus master which supports all functions of Zoran's previous generation PCI Controller, the ZR36057, and supports the sub-system vendor ID requirement of Microsoft's PC '97 standard. For Motion JPEG applications such as video editing, the ZR36067 operates by transferring the compressed video between the system memory and the JPEG codec, while simultaneously transferring the uncompressed video to the VGA display memory for display on the PC monitor. In applications such as video conferencing, the ZR36067 supports transfer of uncompressed video to the system memory where it is compressed in software.

The ZR36067 also supports the transfer of audio data between the audio codec and system memory. The ZR36067 provides all the control signals needed for operation of the ZR36060 and the video decoder and encoder used in video add-in board designs. The ZR36067's Guest Bus allows for glueless interface to additional multimedia devices such as an audio codec, MPEG video decoder, etc. The ZR36067 is available in a 208-pin PQFP package.

The ZR36060/67 Reference Design

The ZR36060/67 Reference Design is a desk-top PC video capture, compression and playback PCI bus add-in board ready for productization by system and board manufacturers. Comprised of the ZR36060 Integrated JPEG Codec, the ZR36067 Video PCI Controller, a video decoder and video encoder, the reference design provides a low-cost, high performance solution for multiple video applications on the PC. The ZR36060/67 supports full resolution, real-time Motion JPEG recording and playback of NTSC and PAL video formats, video capture for applications such as video conferencing and frame grabbing. The reference design kit includes schematics, Orcad files, bill of materials, production database, and Video for Windows drivers supporting Windows 95 and Windows 3.1.