Milpitas, California-based C-Cube Microsystems Inc has introduced the CL480VCD MPEG System Decoder, the first member of the PlayCD family of single-chip MPEG-1 audio and video decoders. The System Decoder was developed with technical contribution from Japanese Victor Co. The family lowers system cost by concentrating an MPEG audio and video decoder in a single chip and will also include integrated MPEG audio-video decoders specifically for multiplayer and multimedia computing applications, to be announced in later. The System Decoder supports version 2.0 of the VideoCD standard, including support for high-resolution stills in 4 M-bits of DRAM. Because it integrates MPEG audio and video decoding on a single chip, it eliminates the need for a separate microcontroller to demultiplex a system-level MPEG bit stream and to synchronise the audio and video. To cut the number of chips needed to use a VideoCD player further, the CL480VCD includes an on-chip CD-ROM decoder, which enables it to be connected directly to a compact disk signal processor. The CL480VCD also incorporates a memory controller for interfacing to DRAM and ROM. It has dedicated post-processing circuitry that smoothly expands the MPEG-1 SIF-resolution image to full screen, eliminating flicker and jagged or pixelated images. It also supports MPEG intra frames for chapter identification images, menus and slides, a feature required for VideoCD 2.0. The CL480VCD is based on a 24-bit general-purpose RISC CPU and several special-purpose coprocessors on chip. It has dedicated CD signal processor, video, audio, memory and host interfaces, which support direct connection to a corresponding external device, such as NTSC/PAL video encoder or audio digital-to-analogue converter, without any glue logic. Several of the interfaces are programmable, enabling the device to be configured for least-cost system implementations in a variety of system environments. A CL480VCD design example will be available in December; its cost is $2,500 and in volume in the latter half of 1995 at $35.