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TI, Wintech unveils point-to-point videophone
design kit
By Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb
(02/19/05, 6:32:11 PM GMT)
Dallas, Texas – Betting the game
on what they think will be the next big thing after VoIP, cell phones and
broadband cable, Texas Instruments and Wintech Digital Systems Technology Corp.
have developed the Videophone Development Platform (VDP) for implementing
point-to-point IP-based videophones.
According to David Dong, president, Wintech,
traditional barriers to adoption of videophones include jerky video quality and
high unit cost.
“However, the introduction of new video
codecs which require half the bandwidth for video transfers,” he said, “the
continuing penetration of IP broadband connectivity and the availability of
single-chip encode and decode implementation has overcome these last-mile
barriers.
“The increasing market demand for IP consumer
videophones with superior audio and video quality is driving the advent of new
and improved systems.”
Further pushing deployment of videophones, he
said, are the many large carriers have announced plans to roll out IP videophones and
related services for small- to mid-sized businesses and individuals with
broadband Internet connections.
Wainhouse Research projects that overall the
personal videoconferencing market will grow from about $21 million in 2003 to
just shy of $180 million in 2008, a compounded growth rate of about 53 percent.
Dong said the VDP from TI and Wintech is an
integrated hardware/software development platform reducing both design
complexity and total system bill of materials, including everything developers
need to begin designing point-to-point videophone systems immediately.
All application system software runs on TI's
600 MHz DSP-based TMS320DM643 digital media processor, including audio/video
compression, networking stacks and control protocols.
From a hardware perspective, he said, the
modular VDP offers a complete development environment for designing and building
consumer videophones. Developers can connect the development boards over a live
network and/or the Internet to test under real-world operating conditions, and
the VDP is easily configured for different video telephony applications.
The hardware platform includes external memory
and a variety of peripherals and audio/video interfaces, network connectivity
and communication interfaces.
The key to the flexibility of the VDP is the
DM643 digital media processor, which incorporates industry protocol standards so
products developed with the VDP are able to interoperate with other videophones
and the existing IP infrastructure.
In addition to complementary TI analog
technology, including the TVP5150 video decoder and AIC23 audio codec, the VDP
includes all the software necessary to evaluate, design and test video telephony
endpoints, including video and voice codecs, integrated reference frameworks,
communications stack and network protocols.
Available now for $6,950, the comprehensive VDP
includes two DM643 boards, two five- inch LCDs, two cameras, network switch/hub
and complete ready-to-use application software.
For more information, go to
www.ti.com/vdppr or
www.wintechdigital.com.
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