AuraVision offers MPEG board with $100 BOM

Electronic News, August 12, 1996 by Andrew MacLellan

Fremont, Calif.--The complicated copyright dispute between a wary entertainment industry and OEMs eager to bring digital versatile disc (DVD) products to market has propped open the window of opportunity for video chip and systems designers, as witnessed by AuraVision's planned introduction here today of a new MPEG-2 playback and video capture reference design.

With a claimed bill of materials(BOM) of less than $100, the Fly Fisher reference board for the PC and set-top box incorporates AuraVision's VxP524 video stream processor and either the HDM8212 or HDM8111 audio/video decoder from Odeum Microsystems, a recent spin-off of Hyundai Electronics America's Digital Media division (EN, July 22).

The design is the first to include AuraVision's PCI bridge chip, which provides both PCI master and slave modes with burst cycle support for performance of 2-D interpolated scaling, dual-level polyphase filtering, cropping, color adjustment and color-space conversion with full 24-bit resolution, according to the company.

The VxP524 bridge IC includes DVD video stream management to identify differences among PC, set-top box and stand-alone player applications and maintain a 60-frame-per-second frame output. The chip's 24-bit RGB output can be dithered to 16 bits, and features an optional overlay circuit with 4x4 interpolated X-Y zoom.

AuraVision explained that its relatively late market arrival was a function of its intensive review process, which culminated in the selection of Odeum from among 26 companies with MPEG-2 technology.

"I don't think there's anything out there I've seen that is that integrated," AuraVision marketing director Chris Day, said of the Odeum decoders.

According to Mr. Day, the HDM8212-based design will support PC applications such as videoconferencing, live television and DVD playback based on the MPEG-2 audio/video compression standard. The board incorporating the HDM8111 chip will enable MPEG-2 video and Dolby AC-3 audio for set-top boxes, featuring DVD playback with either two-channel or full 5.1-channel AC-3 audio.

Fly Fisher reference designs incorporating the HDM8212 will be available later this month, with the HDM8111-based board following in September. Both designs are priced at $1,350. A reference design with source code and redistribution rights will be available for $3,200.

The Fly Fisher software supports Microsoft Media Player and the DirectX suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) as well as ActiveMovie, for which AuraVision is serving as a beta testing site. In addition, the company said its AnP81 overlay D-to-A converter guarantees compatibility with all add-in graphics cards, eliminating the ribbon cable connector and providing uniform software for all graphics chips.