Digital Equipment Corp has entered the multimedia personal computer add-on world with launch of the FullVideo family, a line of board-level add-on products designed to provide full-screen full-motion, television-like video with 16-bit Compact Disk-quality stereo sound. The line uses the ReelMagic Interactive MPEG implementation from Sigma Designs Inc, which compresses material is recorded at 30 frames per second with 16-bit stereo sound and compresses it up to 200:1 so that 74 minutes of full-screen, full-motion video and stereo audio can be played from a single CD-ROM disk. The FullVideo system can be used with a 2Mb 25MHz 80386SX machine up. The FullVideo family includes FullVideo Elite, a MPEG video decompression playback board with 13 titles at $350, and the FullVideo Interactive MPEG Playback System, which includes a single board with MPEG decompression, 16-bit stereophonic sound and CD-ROM controller, internal double-speed CD-ROM drive, stereo speakers and 15 titles, for $750. The products are in US retail outlets now, the company promises.
