Out in Front: December 21, 1995

Matrox is offering its Movie-2 digital audio/video expansion bus as an open standard for developers of PC-based broadcast and professional digital video equipment. The dedicated bus links specialized adapters in a PC to increase the throughput bandwidth to support multiple real-time streams of uncompressed, 10-bit, CCIR (Consultative Committee, International Radio) 601-quality digital video, key signals, and CD-quality digital audio. The Movie-2 bus delivers continuous uncompressed digital audio and video data at more than 242 Mbytes/sec—almost three times the effective bandwidth of the PCI bus.

Manufacturers, system integrators, and value-added resellers can use the modular architecture of the Movie-2 bus in applications such as nonlinear editing systems, live-video switchers, character generators, digital disk recorders, video-on-demand servers, motion-JPEG-to-MPEG-2 transcoders, and commercial insertion systems. More than 10 vendors of digital video equipment have committed to developing Movie-2-bus-compatible products. Those vendors include Interactive Images, Miranda Technologies, Matrox Video Products Group, Optivision, and Pinnacle Systems.

The Movie-2 bus specification is available free, and Matrox periodically holds Movie-2 bus developers’ meetings. For more information, contact Janet Matey at Matrox via phone at (514) 969-6037, fax at (514) 685-2853, or e-mail at Janet.Matey@matrox.com. -- by Fran Granville

Matrox Electronic Systems, Dorval, PQ, Canada. (514) 685-2630.