Californian digital video specialist, C-Cube Microsystems Inc has unveiled a new type of video peripheral device which enables Personal Computer users to capture and record moving video without having to open up the back of their machines to install complex add-in cards. The new devices or MVPs – MPEG video peripherals – are being manufactured by several C-Cube OEMs and ought to begin hitting the streets some time in July. According to officials at C-Cube the devices can be easily connected to a PC or laptop via an external port, such as the printer port and are likely to cost around $200 to $300 compared with the $300 plus video graphics cards which are on the market today. There’s already a product on the market, called Snappy which attaches to the outside of a PC, said Anne Hohenberger a spokesperson for the company. It snaps into the parallel port and is easy to use but can only do still images, she said. MVPs can do full motion video as well as still images and allow you to record from any analog source like a digital camera, camcorder etc. MPEG is the standard for compressing video images and is thought to be a more efficient algorithm for storage than the older JPEG standard. MPEG users can store smaller files and carry out tasks such as putting video on a web page or sending pictures via email. C-Cube OEMs Avermedia and Videonics hope to announce the first retail MVP products early next month.
