press releasesPortalPlayer Launches Platform For Developing Music And Photo-Enabled Personal Media PlayersTogether with Leading ODM Partners, PortalPlayer Announces the Personal Media Player: Photo Edition, Driving the Next Wave in Portable Music Jukeboxes Las Vegas, Nev., January 8, 2004— PortalPlayer, Inc., the company that enabled the fast-growing music jukebox market, today announced a new development platform - the Personal Media Player: Photo Edition. The development platform includes a system-on-chip (SOC), Firmware Development Kit (FDK) and Software Development Kit (SDK) for customers to quickly bring to market a new category of products called "Personal Media Players." These battery-powered, hard-disk-drive-based devices will allow end users to capture, store, play and display their entire music, album art, and photo collections on a single device that fits in their pockets. "PortalPlayer has captured 85 percent of the portable music jukebox market in 2003," said Michael Maia, vice president of sales and marketing of PortalPlayer. "We accomplished this leadership position by delivering complete development platforms to our customers which help them rapidly bring innovative and differentiated products to market. The Personal Media Player: Photo Edition is the next logical step and expands our leadership into the high-growth digital photography segment." PortalPlayer original design manufacturer (ODM) partners Lite-On®, Tatung®, Wistron® and authorized developer Aeronix will be the first ODMs to design personal media players using the new PortalPlayer platform. These ODMs are fully enabled to tailor the platform to fit the unique industrial design, user interface and enhanced feature support requirements of their original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers. Features of the Personal Media Player
In the second half of 2004, the platform will offer image capture support, allowing people to take photographs using their personal media players. In addition, plans are in place to incorporate advanced OLED display technology from Eastman Kodak Company for brighter, more vibrant images visible from a wider viewing angle than conventional LCDs make possible. The Photo Edition Development Platform The PP5020 SOC features dual ARM7TDMI® microprocessors. Its 160 MHz engine enables fast decoding/encoding of digital audio and decoding of JPEG and MJPEG images. Display support is included for YUV out to an external TV encoder, color TFT VGA graphics controller, 4-bit gray scale controller or a bridge interface to smart panels. The PP5020 SOC minimizes system bill-of-materials (BOM) costs through on-chip integration of Hi-Speed USB® 2.0 Device, Host and On-The-Go (OTG) support and FireWire® (IEEE 1394a) connectivity. Fast data transfer rates for up to four hard disk drives are enabled by ATA/66 IDE controllers and dedicated DMA engines. As a result, customers can design a personal media player using the PP5020 without the need for many of the external controllers commonly required with other SOCs. In addition, the PP5020 features advanced power management capabilities that enable shutdown of most functional modules when not in use. Personal media players that incorporate the PP5020 can operate more than 15 hours on a single AA alkaline battery. The Personal Media Player: Photo Edition FDK includes the firmware necessary to develop compelling personal media player products. Specific capabilities of the PortalPlayer (PPI) FDK include:
PortalPlayer also supports the Photo Edition platform with an SDK that enables custom PC application development, including synchronization, firmware updating, and slide show creation. The Photo Edition SDK libraries for the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 and XP operating systems are provided in C++. Pricing and Availability About PortalPlayer # # # PortalPlayer, the PortalPlayer logo and PP5020 are trademarks of PortalPlayer, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
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