Mar 28, 2001 TI's Programmable DSP Remains the Overwhelming Choice for Internet Audio Devices From Portable Audio Players to E-Cassette Players
As the first quarter of 2001 comes to a close, the Internet Audio organization at Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) adds three industry accolades for its DSP technology from the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), MicroDesign Resources and EDN Magazine, as well as four new design-wins from consumer electronics manufacturers Sanyo, Thomson Multimedia, Digisette and Richfield Innovation Pte Ltd. (RFI). TI's award-winning DSP technology has become the overwhelming choice for Internet Audio players and can be found in products from eight of the ten largest consumer electronics manufacturers.
"We have made remarkable progress thus far in 2001 and expect to continue this momentum throughout the year," said Jorge Kittl, business manager of Internet Audio at TI. "As manufacturers integrate the DA250, the most complete and power efficient Internet Audio solution in the industry, we expect to increase our market share as the obvious choice for consumer electronics manufacturers."
"In today's digital audio hardware market, growth remains strong as consumers continue to spend on high-quality products," said Mike Paxton, senior analyst at Cahners In-Stat Group. "TI remains on the leading edge of this market due to their consistent technological advances, key partnerships with industry leaders, and a growing number of successful design-wins."
While TI's Internet Audio business had several significant achievements last year, 2001 continues apace with the recent announcements of various design-wins and accolades. These include:
January - TI's TMS320C55x(TM) has been awarded the MicroDesign Resources Analyst Choice Award, as one of the most significant technology innovations of 2000. Chosen as the winner in the digital signal processor category, TI's power-efficient C55x DSP is the engine behind many of the Internet audio devices that will be hitting the market in 2001. In fact, TI's recently announced DA250 Internet audio specific DSP (October 2000) is based upon the C55x DSP core, delivering powerful features and processing with the lowest battery consumption in the industry.
January - Sanyo's new SSP-PD7 Portable Digital Memory Player will be powered by TI's power-efficient DSP. The PD7 is completely SDMI compliant with support for multiple formats and Liquid Audio's Secure Portable Player Platform (SP3). TI's DSP provides a Multi-Decoder System enabling the Sanyo PD7 to support both MP3 and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) formats. Capitalizing on TI's power-efficient DSPs, the Sanyo PD7 provides advanced features and up to 5 hours of use on a single AAA battery.
February - Once again Thomson Multimedia has chosen TI's DSP to power their new Internet Audio product line. The LYRA2 player (model RD2211) builds upon the success of RCA's original LYRA player, which was the first upgradeable, multi-format portable Internet Audio device. Utilizing TI's power-efficient DSP, the LYRA2 player gives consumers the ability to play up to 12 hours of digital music on two AA batteries.
March - The award-winning Digisette DUO Digital Audio E-Cassette players are now exclusively using TI DSP solutions. The Digisette DUO players are the only players to function as a portable stand-alone player and a cassette emulation device, requiring no adapters or accessories to playback digital audio in virtually any cassette deck. Using TI's power-efficient and programmable DSPs, the DUO players are capable of supporting a variety of audio formats, including MP3 and WMA music files and Audible.com(TM) audiobooks with play times ranging from 6 hours for MP3 to 9 hours for Audible.com spoken word content. The DUO won the 2001 Innovations CES Award for Best in Show - Audio.
March - RFI has selected TI's DSP to power its jazPiper CVR40U PocketZip(TM) Digital Audio Player. The jazPiper is the first player in which a TI DSP supports an Iomega PocketZip(TM) drive, enabling users to store, compile and catalog their music on removable 40MB memory disks. Utilizing the jazPiper's improved DSP settings, users can choose from a wider range of preferences and can store two different presets of their DSP choices. The jazPiper's anti-skip feature delivers excellent sound quality with virtually no distortion or skips.
March - EDN magazine has named TI as a finalist in its 2000 "Innovation of the Year" awards competition. TI's power-efficient TMS320C5510 DSP was chosen to compete in the "Digital-Signal Processors" category. EDN's exclusive awards program is dedicated to honoring truly outstanding and innovative engineering products in the electronics industry each year. Winners will be announced at an awards banquet on April 9 in San Francisco, and in the April 26 issue of EDN.
March - At the recent Tokyo meeting of the SDMI, TI was chosen as the non-PC platform to be used for performance evaluations of the five proposed screening technologies. This choice was made in part because of TI's leading position in the Internet Audio market.
TI offers programmable DSPs that can incorporate updated features and functions with a simple software download, rather than by changing internal hardware. TI's DSPs support all the latest digital music and digital rights management (DRM) formats, as well the broadest range of digital storage media. TI shipped more than two million Internet Audio DSPs by the close of 2000.
