Zooming to port on video

Sigma Designs (SIGM), a manufacturer of MPEG hardware and software products, has joined with Cirrus Logic (CRUS) to support the Zoomed Video (ZV) Port standard, the company said today.

Notebooks with ZV have a direct connection between the PC Card and the screen's display and audio controller. The video and audio data is transferred in real time over a dedicated bus to improve display performance instead of using the slower system bus.

Cirrus is one of the largest makers of PC Card host adapters for use in notebooks, while the Sigma Designs Realmagic Explorer chipset is used in PC Cards for delivery of MPEG-1 video/audio at TV-like quality of 30 frames per second. The companies said they have tested their products for full compatibility.

The ability to ensure compatibility of Cirrus' PC Card host adapters and the Explorer chipset will also help speed acceptance of the ZV technology, according to Prem Talreja, Sigma's vice president of marketing.

"Cirrus has very large market share in [the host adapter] segment. So we are very happy to see that our products work together," Talreja said. He added that even though there are standards are in place for ZV, it still takes a lot of engineering work to reassure notebook manufacturers that ZV will work without problems.