Divio and Philips Deliver Industry's First Consumer-Ready USB Video Capture Solution that Supports Web TV for Windows 98 and WaveTop Applications

Business Wire, Sept 7, 1999

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 7, 1999--

NW680 USB video capture reference design for manufacturers

features NTSC/PAL acquisition, ISO-standard/patented motion JPEG

compression, VBI support, and single-chip replacement of costly

"video capture" chip sets and add-in cards

Divio Inc. and Philips Semiconductor today announced the NW680 NTSC/PAL Capture Engine, the first solution for designing integrated PC99-compliant digital video acquisition devices that connect with a PC or Mac host over the USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface.

The result will be more powerful, less expensive video acquisition devices that will allow any consumer to link their camcorder, TV signal or any other video device and video-capable PC to get high-quality video on the desktop via USB. The NW680's PC99 compliance provides WebTV for Windows 98 and WaveTop support, which will provide future desktop Internet access and information through traditional TV signals.

The NW680 base solution leverages Divio's revolutionary single-chip motion JPEG CODEC and Philips' video decoder and TV tuner to enable manufacturers to develop entirely new classes of high-performance, USB-connected video capture systems. By applying Divio's patented imaging/compression technologies, the NW680 will enable manufactures to bring to market real-time, full motion 25-30 FPS (frames-per-second) digital video acquisition devices that work across the USB interface, at a cost far lower than today's lower quality and far more costly "grabber" designs.

"By supporting the USB interconnect paradigm, we're opening the doors for easier-to-use and higher quality video-enabled applications. The NW680 will also give way to new dimensions of data communications, providing an infrastructure for new information channels, such as sports scores, stocks, weather, and news to reach the desktop without an Internet connection," said Isaac VanKempen, vice president of marketing at Divio Inc. "By simplifying the design and manufacture of video capture products, eliminating complex, add-on video grabber cards, and slow, parallel port connections, this Divio/Philips reference design will change the face of, and expand the market opportunity for home-based and small business video markets."

Martin Maloney, international product marketing manager at Philips Semiconductors, "Our integrated design is expediting the migration from analog to desktop video. In doing so, OEMs will bridge the gap between 'prosumers' and the much larger majority of consumers who have a camcorder and a USB-ready Macintosh, iMac, iBook or PC system."

The NW680 compressed motion JPEG video stream includes built-in tele-text processing and closed captioning, and is specifically designed for high-quality, low bandwidth throughput via the USB port. The transfer rate is maximized using dynamic bit rate control and Divio's patented Motion JPEG compression technology, which produces faster frame rates of non-jerky, 25-30 FPS output with full-screen images even at NTSC/PAL television resolutions. The JPEG encoder is ISO 10918-2 compliant and is based upon the DCT compression algorithm.

To help consumers migrate toward an easier, more satisfying and meaningful video-PC experience, the design combines superior image processing with the video decoder. The design features user-selectable gamma correction as well as hue, saturation and contrast control. It also provides image scaling, with x / y filtering, which yields high quality, smooth video when downscaling across multiple resolutions.

NW680 Manufacturing Kit Pricing/Availability

The NW680 solution is designed to make implementation easier and to reduce time to market, and comes with a complete and ready-to-make reference design. To simplify OEM design efforts, Divio's complete manufacturing kit includes Windows 98/Mac drivers, schematics/Gerber files, video decoder (Philips SAA7113), optional TV tuner, technical manuals, and BOM. Divio is currently sampling the NW680 and reference design to OEMs. The NW680 pricing is available at www.divio.com. Both will be available early fourth quarter, 1999.

About Divio Inc.

Divio, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, has been a leader in digital video technology development since its founding in 1995. Divio's mission is to offer a complete system solution for each of its products in an effort to enhance design in, minimize resources and, thus, improve time to revenue. Pioneering the development of innovative chip-based compression products, Divio develops, markets and manufactures an innovative family of chip-based solutions that enables the real-time input, capture, manipulation and exchange of digital video data for PC and consumer applications.

In addition to Divio's patents filed in algorithm, architecture, and implementation for digital video (DV) and Motion JPEG (MJPEG) compression and decompression schemes, the company has also filed new patents breakthroughs in missing pixel interpolation, image processing, constant bit-rate control and efficient video decoding for PC (eyeball) camera applications.