Hyundai Electronics America Inc’s Digital Media Division has given the first demonstration of what it claims is the industry’s first single-chip MPEG-2 audio and video decompressor. The HDM8211M is initailly being targetted at television set-top box makers although the company is looking at other digital media system markets. It was first announced in April. Pre-production units will be available in late August or early September and volume production at Hyundai’s Korean plant is planned for October this year. Sample prices of $190 have been released and production quantity is expected to be under $55 in for 100,000-up. Single boards are available this month for $1,995. The MPEG-2 market is growing at a rapid pace, both in Europe and worldwide, said Vahe Akay, director of marketing and sale for Hyundai Digital Media. He added that providers and system manufacturers had chosen the standard as a means to deliver digital media. The HDM8211M SAVi decoder offers MPEG-2 Main Profile at Mail Level CCIR601 resoluti on for NTSC and PAL. The decoder chip integrates the three main components of MPEG (system, audio and video) as well as adding MicroSparc RISC with 2Kb instruction cache, graphics overlay and audio and video synchronisation into the single chip. Hyundai claims the chip eliminates the need for multiple memory farms as well as the glue logic required to interface the major components, and this should reduce overall manufacturing costs.
