Vivace is targeting the growing market of video-enabled consumer devices.  In particular, we target two specific segments of this market: 1) portable media players and 2) integrated DTV systems.  As an adjunct to the latter market, we can also support low cost LCD displays incorporating direct video decompression and playback.

With the unit price of LCD’s dropping and battery life improvements, portable media players are starting to become a real possibility in the market.  At this point, these devices allow users to view media from DVDs and other ‘hard’ media.  The next step will be to provide access to content downloaded from a PC, set-top box or digital video recorder on multiple formats including memory cards.  This will be followed by access to online content streamed or downloaded directly into the portable media player.  These types of devices are viewed as the descendants of digital audio products like the iPod. 

Another key market is the integrated DTV market where high definition displays (LCD, Plasma, etc.) are looking to incorporate features normally found in external equipment including video decompression, personal video recording, and playback of stored movies in different formats (DVD, HD-DVD, smart cards, etc.).  With wireless access, these integrated DTV devices will be able to access video content from centralized media servers or through wireless broadcast.

A new standard, H264 or MPEG4 AVC (we will use the term AVC through the rest of this document), is turning out to be the standard of choice for next generation video distribution networks.  Solid support of AVC is a requirement for all video processing chips that expect to be successful in the next few years.  A key advantage for Vivace is the support for a broad range of video standards including MPEG2, MPEG4, AVC, VC-1, WMV9 and RealVideo.