News archive (7 / 1999)

ATI Technologies Inc. today announced the XPERT 2000(TM), with 32 MB of memory, 32-bit true color acceleration and full hardware DVD acceleration for only $99.

The XPERT 2000 is ideal for system builders and resellers looking to differentiate their low cost PCs. Traditionally, low cost PCs come with just 8 MB of graphics memory, poor 2D and 3D and no DVD. For just $99 (ESP) system builders can now add strong 2D and 3D, 32-bit true acceleration, hardware DVD and 4 times the amount of graphics memory. For system builders 32 MB of graphics memory will be the standard.

``The XPERT 2000 will change the image of the low cost PC and smash the perception that they are featureless and unable to handle today's latest games and popular applications'', said Ed Grondahl, vice president of marketing, ATI. ``The XPERT 2000 transforms the featureless low end PC into a 3D, DVD multimedia powerhouse.''

The XPERT 2000 will make 32 MB of graphics memory a standard with system builders. Having 32 MB of memory boosts the performance and visual quality of graphics intense games and also secures the user's investment. As games become more complex, the 32MB will continue to provide the necessary bandwidth for high frame rate, texture intense game play for future games. The XPERT 2000 is fully optimized to operate in 32-bit true color to provide optimal visual quality graphics. And it does so with minimal performance degradation, providing true color with a performance level equal to that of a card that supports only 16-bit color.

Congratulations Petteri & Aretta from the whole After Dawn staff!!

Sigma Designs, Inc., the well known manufacturer of hardware DVD decoders, announced today that Itautec, a leading PC company in Brazil, has selected the REALmagic Ventura Plus DVD playback card using Sigma's EM8220 REALmagic DVD decoder chip to probide DVD playback as an option for its personal computer product line.

The DVD models were initially launched earlier this year as an option for Itautec's top-of-the-line systems. With DVD's emergence as one of the most explosive new home entertainment technologies of all time, Itautec has now decided to provide REALmagic DVD capability as an option for all of its shipping PCs.
``Our customers require reliable and superior computer performance,'' said Gabriel Antonio Marao, Itautec vice president. ``Sigma's award-winning reputation has given us that reliability. For this reason, Itautec is working together with Sigma to market a set-top box in Brazil based on Sigma's reference design, the STB-2000, in the near future. This unique convergence appliance will provide our customers with a single TV-centric product for browsing the Internet, sending/receiving e-mail, playing DVD and CD discs, and more.''
``We are delighted to work with Itautec to open up a new marketing channel in Brazil. Itautec is our first OEM customer to adopt both Ventura Plus and our set-top box reference design based on our EM8220 silicon as a hardware DVD feature in PCs as well as set-top boxes,'' stated William K. Wong, Sigma's vice president of marketing. ``The fact that Itautec selected our DVD decoder chip confirms our belief that hardware DVD solutions meet customer requirements for seamless DVD playback in a multitasking, interactive environment. The current set-top box application enables consumers to plug into their TV for web surfing, e-mail, e-commerce, and DVD playback. With the appropriate hardware and software configuration, the set-top box will be able to support video on demand and digital VCR time-shifting capabilities in the year 2000.''

ChangeMusic.com bought world-famous skinpage, Customize.org. Customize will be added to their [changemusic's] mp3 portal very soon.

This is fifth huge deal that ChangeMusic and it's mother-company Rare Medium Group has done during last 6 months -- the war against mp3.com has begun.

The price was not announced, but some rumours say that it can be descriped as "good money" :-)

(this article is modified from the article released in Yahoo!)

AT&T Corp. has joined with a number of leading entertainment companies to launch a new secure music and media distribution system. An alternative to the MP3 format, a2b is designed to let users listen to high-quality songs that can be downloaded quickly while protecting the copyrights of labels and artists. Read the full article HERE

MGM has finally unveiled the first batch of the upcoming James Bond DVD releases. The seven movies released first will all have 16x9 transfers, and new packaging. All discs also contain trailesr, TV spots and music videos (apart from Goldfinger, Live and Let Die and Thunderball). Detailed booklets will also be included for each movie.

Retail price is $34.95 and street date 19th of October.

Details for each movie are:

· GoldenEye: 3 Documentaries: Short Promotion Featurette, Documentary "The World Of 007", and "The Making Of GoldenEye", and commentary by director Martin Campbell, producer Michael Wilson and writer Bruce Fierstein

· Goldfinger: 3 Documentaries: "The Making Of Goldfinger", "The Goldfinger Phenomenon" and a featurette with screen tests; Still Gallery with over 1,000(!) images, additional ABC promo and audio interviews with Sean Connery, and a commentary track by Director Guy Hamilton and members of the crew

· License To Kill: All-new Documentary "Inside Licence To Kill" plus an additional production featurette; Still Gallery with over 300 images; and 2 commentaries with Director John Glen and and members of the cast, plus second track with Producer Michael Wilson and Vic Armstrong and members of the crew

A new service for mp3 freaks has been opened today, www.freemp3space.com offers 25megs of FREE hdd space for people who want to save their traded mp3s temporarely in the Internet.

I don't know what the nags are at the moment, but sounds like interesting idea...

MSDN, Microsoft Developer Network, announced that beginning in January 2000, all MSDN subscribers can choose to receive their MSDN Subscription on DVD-ROM media. Initially the DVD-ROMs will be in DVD-5 format that are capable of storing the content of about 6 regular CDs. Other formats, like DVD-9 are a possibility in the future.

This move is a clear sign of the increasing popularity of the DVD-ROM format. Only good things can come out of that.

Read the full announcement here.

Grundig launches portable MP3-player called MPaxx.

The basic package includes two 16MB cards, a stereo headset, a Mac adapter, a PC cable and software for Windows 95/98/NT, Linux and Mac operating systems. In future 32MB and 64MB ROS-cards (Record on Silicon) will also be available for MPaxx

MPaxx will be available worldwide soon and it costs about $200.

Mp3.com's first day in NASDAQ was a really roller coaster ride -- the share started at $28 and reached the top with $105 and started going down to $58 1/2. After the bottom, it started to go up again and reached $63 5/16 when NASDAQ was closed.. Interesting to see, what will be the average level in long term for this mp3 "revolution" pioneer.

Mp3.com announced its IPO! This IPO has been a muchly anticipated event for online Mp3 and music fans and especially for those lucky investors who already have a few shares. Prior to the IPO, Mp3.com had raised their inital stock price several times from the first announced $9. When the stock was finally made available for trading earlier this morning, it started at $28. Right now the stock is at $70 and has already hit a peak of $103!

(edited from the article in www.eatsleepmusic.com)

MusicTV NetWorks and Diamond Multimedia, the manufacturer of Rio mp3 player have made a deal that guarantees the thing that MTV starts to promote mp3 format and Rio player on their channels and first of all, on MTV's websites (mtv.com, vh-1.com, nick.com and sonicnet.com).

Here are some juicy highlights of the upcoming Columbia TriStar DVDs during the last quarter of 1999.

September

7th: The Buddy Holly Story, Fright Night, Sleepless in Seattle: Special Edition, The Tingler, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail

14th: Alvarez Kelly and Tommy

21st: The City of Lost Children, The Dark Crystal, Heavy, Someone to Watch Over Me, The Thirteenth Floor, and This is My Father

28th: Night of the Living Dead (1990), Immortal Beloved, and Inferno

October

5th: The Blue Lagoon, Labyrynth and Hard Eight

12th: Easy Rider, Hideous Kinky, and S.L.C. Punk!

19th: Beverly Hills Ninja, The Last Hurrah, The Nuttiest Nutcracker, and Persuasion

26th: Arlington Road, and The Taming of the Shrew

November

2nd: Heavy Metal: Special Edition, Pal Joey, and The Mask of Zorro: Deluxe Edition

"The Register" today reported that:

Audiohighway patents MP3 digital music player
US purveyor of online music Audiohighway.com put the cat among the digital music pigeons yesterday when it announced it had been granted a key patent on portable digital audio players.
The company applied for the patent, number 5,914,941, back in 1995. It describes the use of a "portable information storage/playback apparatus having a data interface" used to store and play back downloaded content regardless of the format that content is stored in.
So essentially anyone who ever produces a digital audio player, such as Diamond Multimedia's Rio, now has to cough up a royalty to Audiohighway, something clearly not lost on the company.

The whole article can be seen at:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/

New features in WinAmp v2.24 (directly from NullSoft webpage):

-WSZ (Winamp Skin Zip) handling (simply open a .WSZ file in explorer to have it installed)
-Two distributions (one with WMA and ASFS, one without)
- Better equalizer presets
- Better shuffle logic
-Better docking code
-Better support for invalid ID3v2 tags (for people putting invalid tags on)
-Minibrowser optimizations
-Fixed occasional random crashes from 2.23

DVD Profiler - the wonderful free DVD database software from InterVocative software - has gone into open beta phase. You can download the software from InterVocative Software's homepage.

You also need to register to obtain an activation key. The registration is free for the version with advertisements and low resolution cover scans.

Even that the Net is full of mp3 search engines, there is still some faith left - a new beginner opens in search engine fight, called theseek. A special features that this one has are in the search options - theseek can find besides mp3s but also video clips, album covers and lyrics. Give it a try!

Public Enemy releases their newest album "There's a Poison Goin' On" in the Internet as mp3 streaming in 20th of July. You'll need WinAmp and mp3Spy for listening. Check out AtomicPop's homepage for listening times and listening guide.

UtopiaSoft released a new upgrade of their superb mp3 player for WinCE platform. New version is 1.6 and new and/or improved features include:

-You can now set the MP3 playback quality to High (44kHz), Medium (22kHz) or Low (11kHz)
-Switch between Mono or Stereo playback
-Improved [ AdaptivePlay ] with on/off switch
-Easier playlist editing. You now can save your playlists in any folders you desire, and it also allows you to create folders within Hum
-More affordable. Hum v1.6 now only costs $19.95!
-Supports all display resolutions
-Customized downloable color [ skins ] for all resolutions
-Random and repeat play
-Lower CPU power usage

You can download a free trial version from our software archive!

Nvidia's next product TNT3/NV10 will propably deliver photorealistic dreams(or nightmares) to your home, in the form of games. In the article by Kristian H.Andersen he speculates possibilites of TNT3 and delivers information of TNT3, possibly most waited 3d chip ever.

Here are some highlights from the actual article:

"Nvidia has revealed TNT3/NV10 will have support for transform- and lightning acceleration - geometry acceleration - and thereby should photo-realistic graphic be possible on even the modest computers. - According to Nvidia's roadmap TNT3/NV10 will have 15,000,000 transistors on the same chip; the same amount as Intel's planned 800MHz Merced processor. Hence the massive numbers of transistors the micron will surely drop from 0.25 to 0.18 or even 0.15 allowing much higher clock rates. - Like Voodoo3 TNT3/NV10 will presumably be released in four different versions (or perhaps even five); an OEM-version with 16/32MB of RAM, a standard with 64MB, a standard ultra with 128MB, a professional with 192MB and perhaps an professional Special Edition with 256MB of RAM."

After these teasers, why not try actual article written by Andersen here

Sonique 1.05 has been released! This update adds enhanced skin support, numerous improvements and a new WMA decoder. Grab this swooby new version now from the download page.