Sun Microsystems Inc moved into multimedia this week with launch of the SparcStation 10SX starting at $15,500; the SparcStation 10M starting at $17,100; and the SparcClassic M for $5,000 in quantities of 12 or more. The SparcStation 10SX is for the image processing market, and has a graphics and imaging ASIC in its memory subsystem. The ASIC can manipulate 300Mb images, and provides 24-bit, Z-buffered, three-dimensional graphics as well as hardware-accelerated video playback capabilities. Both Eastman Kodak Co and Adobe Systems Inc have agreed to license and resell the 10SX and will bundle their own products with it. Adobe will give 10SX customers a free copy of Adobe Photoshop until March 1994, while Kodak intends to make Photo CD display and editing capabilities available in the next release of Solaris. The SparcStation 10M is the same the 10SX, but also incorporates a real-time video capture and compression SBus board developed by Sun – as does the SparcClassic M. The board is based on C-Cube Microsystems Inc’s hot new VideoRisc Compression Processor, which provides 320 by 240 encoding resolution (CI No 2,270). This, says Sun, makes both machines suitable for multimedia authoring and video conferencing. They also come with a video camera and CD-ROM disk with licensable video and multimedia programs, and ship from December 15. Existing SparcStation users can buy a separate multimedia bundle for $1,900. This includes the SunVideo capture and compression board, a video camera and CD-ROM disk. The SunVideo board alone costs $1,500.
