Intel offers digital PC camera 'guidelines.'

Electronic News, August 11, 1997 by Cynthia Bournellis

Santa Clara, Calif.--Intel's campaign to become more than a chip company is once again heating up. The company now has its fingers in the digital camera market, releasing a set of guidelines for the development of low-cost digital cameras, which Intel claims will become the next rage in PC peripherals for Intel-based computers.

The Portable PC Camera '98 Design Guideline is an outline for consumer electronics manufacturers, PC OEMs and independent software vendors to follow in order to reduce the costs of digital cameras, make them easier to use with PCs and make better imaging applications for the PC.

These new gadgets, which Intel is calling PC cameras, will be easier to connect to a PC to capture, enhance, store and share images. But isn't that what today's digital cameras do? Yes. But they cost too much and are difficult to use, said Peter Green, GM of Intel's Digital Peripherals division. "Today's digital cameras aren't designed to work with the PC in mind. The big problem is they have many file formats and are difficult to use if you are not PC-literate. The manipulation of images is slow, and the performance of the camera isn't always what you hoped for."

With the new design guideline, Intel says it has derived an outline that meets the PC model, in that certain functions from today's cameras such as data compression, removable electronic film, color image capture, image download and power consumption are stripped from the cameras and placed into the PC platform. Removing or minimizing certain functions will allow consumer electronics manufacturers to lower prices and make these cameras more appealing to novice users, said Mr. Green. They may even ignite PC sales into the home.

The guideline specifies the use of existing technologies, such as Pentium and Pentium II processors with MMX technology, which are capable of performing image processing tasks such as filter and transform which are applied on a pixel-by-pixel basis; the FlashPix File Format, which maintains image quality as images are transferred among multiple software applications and the Internet; removable flash memory cards, which serve as reusable electronic rolls of film; and the Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection in order to help users exchange image files and connect cameras to the PC.

USB, however, has not been touted as the ideal bus for consumer electronics devices. The IEEE 1394 high-speed serial bus, on the other hand, has been. Products with 1394 interfaces in the market include digital camcorders from Sony and adapter cards from Adaptec. In April, Apple Computer released its 1394 application programming interface. Adaptec, who has been a strong leader of the 1394 parade, is not on Intel's list of supporters, but Intel said it is in current talks with Adaptec and said there is a plan to add 1394 to the new design guideline. In the meantime, 1394.a is included as an optional flash feature.

The Portable PC Camera '98 Design Guideline had been in development at Intel for 18 months. It is not designed to hinder the development of current digital camera technologies, but rather to spawn a new category of entry-level cameras. PC cameras are expected to hit retail shelves by 2Q98. They will be sold separately, as well as come bundled with PCs. "The camera market has been very stable for the last 10 years, and this guideline lets us create a PC peripheral that if it performs at the right price, will have a significant attachment rate," said Mr. Green.

There are more than 20 supporters of the Portable PC Camera '98 Design Guideline. They include Acer, Adobe Systems, Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Umax Data Systems, Samsung Electronics, Polaroid, The LivePix Co. and Eastman Kodak.