Fremont, California-based Sigma Designs Inc has announced RealMagic Rave, a Video Electronics Standards Association, VESA, Local Bus graphics accelerator with Moving Picture Experts Group, MPEG, interactive full-screen, television quality video and CD-quality MPEG audio playback for personal computer systems. RealMagic Rave, which uses the Trident Microsystems Inc 9440AGi graphical user interface acceleration chip, can play back up to 74 minutes of interactive full-screen, full-motion video combined with CD-quality MPEG audio from a single CD-ROM. The RealMagic Rave controller works with an 80486SX/25 or higher personal computer in any available slot that conforms to the VESA Local Bus specifications, version 2.0. It supports 1Mb or 2Mb of dynamic RAM and has refresh rates of up to 75Hz. It is capable of displaying up to 16m colours at 800 by 600 resolution, up to 64,000 colours at 1,024 by 768 resolution, and 256 colours at 1,280 by 1,024 resolution. It can display 128,000 effective colours at resolutions up to 1,280 by 1,024 at 30 frames per second, the US television rate. The RealMagic RAVE controller also provides 16-bit stereo, compact disk-quality MPEG sound simultaneously with video. RealMagic RAVE VESA Local Bus will ship this month, at $490 for the 1Mb configuration and $570 for the 2Mb. The board will be bundled with an MPEG preview version of Flash Traffic, City of Angels from Tsunami Media Inc and a complete MPEG version of Ocean Life from Sumeria Inc, the company promises.
