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Sigma Designs Highlights Breakthrough Set-Top Box Design at PC Expo

World’s First PC-Centric Set-Top Box with Integrated On-board Hardware MPEG and IGS Streaming Media Processor Ready-to-Build Reference Design Available now

NEW YORK CITY (June 22, 1999) – Sigma Designs, Inc. (Nasdaq:SIGM), the leader in DVD/MPEG-2 decoder solutions, announced today the immediate availability of its next-generation set-top box reference design, the STB-2000. This unique convergence appliance represents a new wave of flexibility, performance, and cost-reduction that will be made available through cable companies, telcos, ISPs, satellite providers, and systems integrators that are deploying high bandwidth, digital video-ready Internet services.

Sigma’s new set-top box design is presently undergoing engineering evaluation by a number of OEMs, and will provide users with a single appliance for browsing the Internet, sending/receiving e-mail, playing DVD and CD discs, ordering movies on-demand, and more.

Executives at several of these firms have said that an inexpensive, diskless set-top box equipped with REALmagic will be an excellent way for companies and individuals to display true time-shifted video-on-demand over a switched network. Using this technology, people can come home from work and watch any program that was played on any TV channel that day, with fast forward and reverse play, without having to remember to program their VCR in advance.

William K. Wong, Sigma Designs’ vice president of marketing emphasized, "Consumers and ISP’s both realize that single-purpose set-top boxes, which are merely digital TV tuners or web browsers, are old technology. They are looking for greater convergence of these technologies, more features, and more flexibility. STB-2000 combines all of the latest TV set-top technologies into a single, embedded box which consumers can plug into their TV, for web surfing, e-mail, e-commerce, TV tuning, video on demand, DVD playback, Digital VCR, and more."

The graphics subsystem on the box is the result of a close partnership between Sigma Designs and IGS Technologies of Santa Clara, Calif. The IGST CyberPro5050 streaming media processor features flicker-free TV output and has the highest picture quality rating of any chip for ensuring sharp, crisp display and blending of any video, text and graphics on TV sets. This is absolutely critical for enabling web browsing on standard TVs, which offer much lower resolution than computer monitors.

The REALmagic EM 8220 MPEG-2/DVD decoder chip on the motherboard interfaces directly to the CyberPro display chip for high-performance video in a window and full-screen DVD and MPEG-2 video playback that equals today’s conventional set-top DVD players.

OEMs will configure the STB-2000 with a wide variety of network interface cards (NICs) and receiver cards for capabilities such as Ethernet, ATM, ADSL, DOCSIS cable modem, DVB, DSS, VSB, QAM, QPSK, and CODFM. These "personality cards" enable ISPs—cable operators, telcos, and ADSL providers—to deploy STB-2000 configured to meet the needs of their system.

In addition to supporting the Windows 98 and NT operating systems, MPEG device driver support is also available for WindRiver VxWorks, and Microsoft Windows CE, which are well-established, fully embedded operating systems.

Sigma Designs is working with key OEM manufacturers to build the set-top box based on the Sigma reference design. The set-top box 2000 design will be sold to OEMs, system integrators, telcos, and ISPs, and can be customized to provide various chassis and form factors for the consumer living room environment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sigma Designs and REALnewsnet.com Join Forces to Provide Video News Content to TV Station News Rooms

REALnewsnet.com to Provide Video News Programming Using REALmagic DVD Decoder Card

Milpitas and Woodland Hills, CA, August 9, 1999—Sigma Designs, Inc. (Nasdaq: SIGM), a recognized leader in digital video solutions for commercial applications, and REALnewsnet.com, an on-demand video clip service, today announced an agreement to provide video news stories using REALmagic DVD decoder cards to TV station news rooms across the country.

News organizations will be able to download video news stories by logging on to the REALnewsnet.com web site. The site will provide a continuous source of fresh video not found on traditional news feeds. Such "filler" video is geared to hold viewers’ interest throughout the news block of multiple programming slots.

In addition to a variety of amazing events and celebrity sightings, REALnewsnet.com will also provide a "Clip of the Day," the very best video story gathered from a network of stringers around the country. Finally, REALnewsnet.com will provide one-minute pre-produced segments for television. The segments include titles such as RNN’s Gossip Minute, RNN’s Entertainment Minute, RNN’s Urban Best, and RNN’s Country Mile.

Archived video clips and still photography are also available.

TV station news staff can click onto the REALnewsnet.com web site and preview material. When they like what they see, they simply click the "buy video" button to download the news segment. The first time a particular news staffer downloads a video segment, they will also purchase a REALmagic DVD decoder card from the web site to decode the video at professional quality suitable for commercial broadcasting. As soon as the REALmagic card is installed in the customer’s PC, he or she can play back and broadcast any video purchased from the REALnewsnet web site.

"We understand how jammed the news day becomes," said Jan Richards, News Director for REALnewsnet.com. "We’ve created a customized site to enable a quick and easy way to provide zany, engaging video clips that will ease the news producer’s daily headache. Sigma’s award-winning reputation for digital video decoding has given us a reliable technology for assuring that our customers receive the broadcast quality they expect."

"We’re thrilled to be working with REALnewsnet.com to deliver topnotch video to TV news rooms," stated William K. Wong, Sigma’s vice president of marketing. "This agreement further extends Sigma’s digital video leadership by enabling numerous news producers to experience a high-quality broadband application."

REALnewsnet.com

REALnewsnet.com is an affiliate of e-Realbiz, a southern California-based e-commerce company specializing in marketing and distributing specialty products through direct-to-consumer channels. e-Realbiz brings an exciting new dynamic to e-commerce and e-shopping by combining the power and immediacy of the Internet with proven tenets of direct response marketing. The e-Realbiz executive team brings years of experience in entertainment and intellectual property law and business affairs. Visit the REALnewsnet web site @ http://www.realnewsnet.com.

About Sigma Designs:

Sigma Designs is an acknowledged leader in the fast-growing digital video market. The company focuses on meeting the growing demand for Internet-based digital video delivery and hardware video encoding/playback solutions for business, home, and education markets. Sigma specializes in digital video decoding for the PC DVD market, for video streaming over corporate Intranets and extranets, and for the emerging set-top box/information appliance market. Sigma is a driving force in advancement of the digital video technology used in high-speed, high-bandwidth transmission. Sigma Designs’ products, marketed under the REALmagic trade name, are sold worldwide through a direct sales force, distributors, and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). For more information, visit the Company’s web site at http://www.sigmadesigns.com.

REALmagic DVR Slashes the Cost and Complexity of DVD Authoring

Sigma Designs Delivers Complete DVD Video Production Solution to Businesses and Schools at Remarkable Cost Savings

SAN FRANCISCO (August 16, 1999)—With the announcement of its revolutionary REALmagicâ Digital Video Recorder (DVRÔ ) for less than $1,000, Sigma Designsâ , Inc. (Nasdaq: SIGM) has slashed the cost of creating and playing DVD video. A fully integrated solution, REALmagic DVR combines a high-performance DVD encoder with the award-winning quality of its Hollywood PlusÔ DVD decoder on a single PCI add-in card.

At this week’s DVD Pro ’99 Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco, the leaders in DVD technology will demonstrate their latest wares to a growing audience of educators and corporate in-house production staff seeking to take advantage of DVD technology in their jobs. Up until now, DVD encoding technology has been oriented to Hollywood producers. But corporate training departments do not need the features required for releasing "Titanic" on DVD.

Sigma’s REALmagic DVR provides a simple, low-cost solution that leverages the well-known REALmagic brand name and its high-quality reputation. As companies with high-end solutions are scrambling to bring their $50,000-$100,000 DVD production solutions to an affordable price for the corporate and education markets, Sigma has announced a complete DVD video production system for less than $1,000. With Sigma’s all-in-one encoder/decoder, in-house video producers, graphic designers, and educators have an affordable solution for recording, editing, authoring, and archiving amazingly high-quality video and audio. Over one million satisfied customers in corporations, schools, and homes around the world have been dazzled by the high-quality playback of REALmagic DVD/MPEG cards in their PCs. Now, with REALmagic DVR, PC users can play and record their own digital video for entertainment, training, education, and website development.

The demand for these capabilities is growing at a rapid pace as businesses and educators realize how easy it is to bring their ideas to life. INSIGHT RESEARCH predicts that global sales of devices that utilize MPEG-2 encoders and decoders will reach $23.9 billion this year and top $125 billion in 2003.

"Corporate trainers and educators immediately realized that high-end systems are too difficult to use and offer high-end features not needed in their environments," said William K. Wong, Sigma Designs’ vice president of marketing. "We understand what our customers want—they want a professional-quality, reliable hardware encoder that will get the job done. We feel that REALmagic DVR has the functionality and price point that will enable us to capture a large

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market share with this audience. Today’s corporate environment requires that projects be completed in a day or two, not in the three-month timeframe that Hollywood studios enjoy. By offering the relevant features of the higher-priced DVD encoders for a fraction of the cost, Sigma is well positioned to accelerate the convergence of media technologies."

REALmagic DVR delivers consistently perfect quality by performing all video recording and playback in hardware. It simultaneously encodes and decodes MPEG video, enabling the user to see the results of various encoder settings in real time, without laborious trial and error. Since MPEG encoding is so processor-intensive, some encoding products on the market today take shortcuts to compress and decompress MPEG video—not REALmagic DVR. Its pure hardware approach uses the latest advances in comb filtering, Adaptive Motion Estimation, Field/Frame Motion Estimation, and Adaptive Motion Compensation to consistently deliver 30 razor-sharp frames of video every second. With a 200 MHz Pentiumâ or equivalent CPU, the add-in card can run concurrent applications and deliver smooth video capture and playback without taxing the system.

Complete Video Production System--From Capture to Playback

A fully integrated suite of video applications is included with REALmagic DVR, including MPEG encoding with real-time preview, MPEG editing, and VCD, SVCD, and DVD authoring as well as DVD and MPEG file playback. To author a video, users simply drag-and-drop their compressed video and audio clips, graphics, backgrounds, and buttons into the REALmagic Authoring application to build their interactive DVD with a single mouse click

Price, Availability

Sigma has enhanced the value of REALmagic DVR by adding full-featured application software: REALmagic DVD Station, REALmagic Authoring, and REALmagic Editing software. Connectors are included for composite and S-Video in and out, stereo audio in and out, and S/P DIF audio output. The versatile codec includes drivers for Windowsâ 95, 98, and NT with DirectShow filters.

REALmagic DVR will be available during the third quarter of this year and will be sold through OEMs and system integrators. A number of end user upgrade kit producers are planning to

release retail kits incorporating REALmagic DVR in time for the holidays. The kits will enable customers to upgrade their Windows 98/NT PCs to video and DVD production systems. The suggested retail price for the codec card is $999.

About Sigma Designs

Sigma Designs is an acknowledged leader in the fast-growing digital video market. The company focuses on meeting the growing demand for Internet-based digital video delivery and hardware video encoding/playback solutions for business, home, and education markets. Sigma specializes in digital video decoding for the PC DVD market, for video streaming over corporate Intranets and extranets, and for the emerging set-top box/information appliance market. Sigma is a driving force in advancement of the digital video technology used in high-speed, high-bandwidth transmission. Sigma Designs’ products, marketed under the REALmagic trade name, are sold worldwide through a direct sales force, distributors, and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). For more information, visit the Company’s web site at http://www.sigmadesigns.com.

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