Advanced multimedia technology from SGS-THOMSON creates 'first' at WinHECR

Key enabling technology for multimedia PCs from SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics powered an important 'first' at the recent Microsoft Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC). At the event in San Jose, California, Microsoft presented MPEG bitstreams running within Windows 95Ö using SGS-THOMSON's latest single-chip MPEG-2 audio/video decoder.

"We are very pleased that Microsoft chose our MPEG-2 products to demostrate MPEG under Windows95," said Guy Lauvergeon, general manager of SGS-THOMSON's Image Processing Business Unit. "The PC industry now accepts MPEG as the compression standard. Our leadership in the MPEG decoder market and experience of supplying MPEG decoders to consumer set-top box applications and PC applications has enabled this industry first," he added.

The emergence of MPEG on the PC, plus new digital TV services and DVD systems, combined with convergence trends in the computer, consumer and communications industries, is expected to create a new market for MPEG-2 in the PC. "The impending higher bandwidth media systems will give PC users the capability to enjoy the improved picture quality of MPEG-2, and this will create incremental growth opportunities to a market that is already growing very quickly," added Lauvergeon.

Notes to editors

WinHEC '96 is the fifth annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference. It is intended to bring togehter the product development and technical managers for all the leading manufacturers and suppiers in the PC industry in one efficient setting. It provides a forum to share both technical and product information, allowing companies in the PC and client/server hardware business to build the best systems and subsystems for Windows and WindowsNT platforms.

Windows95Ö and DirectXÖ are trademarks of Microsoft Corp.

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