Startup rolls MPEG encoding software

LAS VEGAS — Medio Systems Inc., a year-old startup, rolled out a software-only MPEG-2 encoding product at Comdex on Monday (Nov. 15) that it said will bring video recording and playback to a new low price point for PCs. Medio said it will sell its MVision MPEG-2 encode/decode software, which will run on a PC host processor, for as little as $30 in high unit volumes.

While a handful of silicon vendors have been rolling out low-cost hardware MPEG-2 encoders to jump start the market for PC and consumer video recorders, those solutions often cost as much as $140 per unit, said Ian Xie, president of Medio Systems (San Jose, Calif.). In addition to a $40 codec, those solutions can require as much as 12 Mbytes of fast dedicated SDRAM, Xie said.

Medio's MVision software can encode D1 resolution MPEG-2 and DVC video on a Pentium III or Athlon processor using existing system memory. The software's algorithms can handle the encoding process at a flexible bit rate ranging from 1-to-6 Mbits/second.

"There are many, many large OEMs looking at this software right now," said Xie. The software can also enable DVD authoring or PC-based video phones, Xie said.

While the basic code is now ready to ship, several OEMs said they want a package that includes both the existing algorithms and a user interface that helps end users control the VCR-like functions allowed by the software. It will take Medio about another two months to deliver that whole package, Xie said.

Xie founded Medio Systems a year ago after leaving Cyrix Corp., where he helped design a multimedia instruction set architecture for Cyrix's clone X86 processors.

Xie said he realized he could task existing instructions in a processor to accelerate MPEG-2 decoding, and decided to form a company to do just that. Medio uses special instructions in Intel's MMX2 and in Advanced Micro Devices' 3DNow that speed the process of MPEG-2 encoding. The resulting code absorbs about 65 percent of the capabilities of a Pentium III, Xie said.

Besides a ready market among PC makers looking to differentiate their products, Medio also hopes to sell its software to Internet service providers. ISPs could use the software to speed Web casting and mediastreaming services, Xie said.

MVision handles MPEG-2 Main Profile@Main Level encoding. It supports both frame and field coding for progressive and interlaced video. The software can encode NTSC (720 x 480 x 30 frames/second) video or PAL (720 x 576 x 25 frames/s).

Search words: Medio Systems, MVision