The University of Washington has developed a digital computing system based around Texas Instruments Inc’s new high-speed MVE Multimedia Video Processor signal processor launched a couple of weeks ago (CI No 2,372), and in contrast to many such university efforts, it is to be launched shortly as a commercial product. The Microsoft Corp Windows-hosted system is designed to give personal computer users access to high quality video. The university has licensed the system, called the Mediastation 5000, to Redmond-based Precision Digital Images Inc. According to the university, Mediastation 5000 enables users to receive, watch, store, send and edit video with CD-quality audio in real time – over any distance – at five times the resolution of the best conventional television available today. Mediastation 5000 is essentially a parallel supercomputer on a board, capable of more than 2,000m operations per second. It compresses and decompresses full-motion video digital signals arriving over the system at 30 frames a second. Professor Yongmin Kim, who developed the system with graduate students, said the Mediastation supports a range of applications, including desktop video teleconferencing, video-on-demand, desktop video and audio editing, and interactive television. Precision Digital Images is currently looking for OEM customers for the thing, Kim says, adding that prototypes will become available in the next two months, with production models at the end of the year. The cost of the system is still unclear, but Kim says he hopes it will be around $5,000.
