Philips' chip brings DVD-recording to the high-volume consumer market

Business Wire, May 20, 2002

Business/Technology Editors

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 20, 2002

Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) today announced the launch of a single chip MPEG2 CODEC, which will enable DVD manufacturers to quickly develop DVD-recorders. The pnx7100 is a single-chip AVG (Audio, Video, and Graphics) MPEG2 CODEC targeted for laser disk- or hard disk-based digital recording systems. Offering the highest level of integration in the industry, as well as comprehensive software support, the pnx7100 will allow manufacturers to develop digital video recorders in record time -- cutting the manufacturers' development cycle by 35 percent, while meeting the required high volume consumer price points.

"DVD recorders are expected to hit the big time as falling prices bring them in touching distance of regular play-only devices," said Peter King, director of Broadband Device Strategies at Strategy Analytics. "We expect worldwide demand for (TV set-top) DVD recorders this year to reach 1.3 million units, and then 3.8 million in 2003, rising to 10.1 million in 2005."

"The pnx7100 chip offers a total solution to manufacturers of DVD recorders," said Jeroen Keunen, head of consumer and multimedia with the semiconductor division of Philips in Asia Pacific. "Until now, DVD recorder manufacturers have needed to use a separate MPEG2 encoder, separate MPEG2 decoder, sometimes even a separate chip to do transcoding from DV-to-MPEG2 format, and separate memory for each of these chips. Now, with the introduction of this new chip, all of these features are contained on one chip, which greatly reduces the bill of material and speeds up the development cycle."

To facilitate fast time to market, the pnx7100 chip is supported by the industry standard DVD RW software stack. The chip is a third-generation solution for the DVD-recordable market with both playback and recording functions being derived from best in class software solutions already in the market. The experience gained by Philips as the driver of the DVD RW standard has added to the refinement of the pnx7100. By providing maximum compatibility with existing DVD-Video and DVD-ROM equipment, it allows for media interchange between consumer electronic equipment and PC platforms. Both home-recorded and pre-recorded discs can be played on the same equipment.

The pnx7100 chip demonstrates high quality MPEG2 encoding, decoding and transcoding capabilities. It can support multiple digital video-recording standards including DVD RW or Hard-Disk PVR (Personal Video Recorder). The chip includes a high performance MIPS CPU core, and is based on Philips' Nexperia(TM) platform. It has a unified memory architecture that allows the MPEG subsystems, graphics and CPU to share the external SDRAM. External memory mapped peripherals can be connected to the PCI-XIO bus interface.

The encoder function includes a video-input processor, a video encoder, an audio encoder, an IEEE 1394 interface and a software multiplexer. A watermarking detector is included for digital rights management. The pnx7100 can be cascaded to form a DV-to-MPEG, or an MPEG-to-MPEG transcoder. MPEG data is passed from decoder to encoder to aid in achieving a high quality transcoder. To further reduce the system costs the digital video encoders (DENCs) are also integrated.

The pnx7100 chip is currently available in sample quantities for selected customers. Volume production is scheduled for Q3 2002 -- supporting customer production ramp-up in Q4 2002.

About Philips

Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of $28.8 billion (EUR 32.3 billion) in 2001. It is a global leader in color television sets, lighting, electric shavers, medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, and one-chip TV products. Its 186,000 employees in more than 60 countries are active in the areas of lighting, consumer electronics, domestic appliances, components, semiconductors, and medical systems. Philips is quoted on the NYSE (symbol: PHG), London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and other stock exchanges. News from Philips is located at www.semiconductors.philips.com.