ESS debuts final member of DVD trio

Electronic News, August 4, 1997 by Peter Brown

Fremont, Calif.--Expanding its strategic focus into the DVD player arena, ESS Technology introduced the final member of a three-chip set targeted at DVD players and set-top boxes. ESS claims the chipset is the industry's first to offer three chips instead of the standard four-to-five chips in chipsets offered by competitors.

Dubbed the ES3308, the device is in addition to the company's VideoDrive family for VideoCD, DVD player and set-top box applications. The DVD player chipset includes the ES3301 transport/decryption chip and the ES3207 digital-to-audio converter and multi-standard television encoder as well as the ES3308. The ES3308 integrates both a RISC and digital signal processor (DSP) core, creating an expanded programmable feature set for the DVD chipset, ESS said.

"This market is so full of hype that it's hard to tell what the right numbers are, but so far growth is sluggish because of the lack of games and feature films, the encryption of DVD algorithms and the whole price issue," said Giri Venkat, marketing manager for DVD/set-top box for ESS in an interview with Electronic News. "When we hit that $200 to $350 price point, then we will see the market take off and be eliminating the amount of silicon in a DVD player." Mr. Venkat added that chip count reduction is a high priority technology objective for ESS.

An MPEG-2 video decoder and Dolby AC-3/MPEG audio decoder have been integrated into the ES3308 as well as the proprietary RISC and DSP cores. The Dolby core can support 5.1 channel decoding and two channel downmix mode. The ESS MPEG-2 decoder is backward compatible with VideoCD 2.0 and MPEG-1, making it suitable for use in many Asian markets, Mr. Venkat noted. Although the chipset is backward compatible with VideoCD, ESS said it won't replace any of its VideoCD devices because the demand for VideoCD is still a steady, unchanging market for the company. Other functions supported from the DSP core include video pan and scan, letter box mode, and support for both television and movie aspect ratios.

ESS said the chipset is programmable, allowing for upgrades and expansion of capabilities through software code rather than having to purchase new silicon. The ES3308 is sampling priced at $35 in OEM quantities. A complete reference design from ESS is available now, the company added.

According to Mr. Venkat, ESS has plans to roll out a two-chip offering in 4Q97--integrating the ES3308 and ES3301 chips into a single offering--and further driving the price for DVD players down while maintaining the functionality. Conversion of the DVD chipset to a set-top box chipset takes only the addition of a front-end network interface module (NIM) that connects the chipset to the set-top box.

ESS faces heavy competition in a market that is dominated by the likes of LSI Logic, C-Cube and SGS Thomson. With Sony entering the market two weeks ago (EN, July 21) and hints from GEC Plessey Semiconductor about entering the market, the competition could get fierce.

ESS is also considering migrating its technology to the DVD-ROM arena for PCs. However, nothing concrete has been established within the company as yet, although the idea of a single-chip offering for DVD-ROMs is one possibility, Mr. Venkat said. Also, ESS could utilize its chips for the Internet, video phone or even digital VCRs utilizing technology from the VideoDrive family.

"Our primary market for DVD is going to be in DVD players while DVD-ROM will be our secondary market. Manufacturers want increased time-to-market in the PC space. So there we would focus on getting our products out as fast as possible while conforming to the known standards for DVD-ROM." said Mr. Venkat. "From that point on, anything we can do with DVD and set-top box we can migrate to other applications including digital VCRs and the Internet."