Magnum Semiconductor Announces MS9410 Advanced DVD Codec

Connects Living Room Video Recorders to Digital Broadcast, Portable Electronics, PCs and the Web

LAS VEGAS — Magnum Semiconductor Corporation, the world’s leader in DVD codec solutions, today announced the MS9410 Advanced DVD Codec IC, the newest member of the MS94xx series of market-leading DVD encoder and consumer entertainment system controller chips. The MS9410 brings new levels of visual quality to consumer video recording, as well as providing complete connectivity solutions for receiving, storing, and sharing consumer media contents.

Typical inputs to the MS9410 include MPEG-2 transport stream from a digital broadcast, NTSC and PAL video from analog broadcasts or VCR decks, and images and video from digital cameras and camcorders. It encodes video and audio, and can write to all of the popular consumer writable optical formats, including DVD-R, DVD-R/W, DVD + R/W, and DVDRAM in both single and dual-layer.

The MS9410 also supports a wide variety of popular playback formats. For video, these include the popular internet formats DivX Home Theater and Nero Digital. Magnum’s proprietary Diagonally Enhanced Picture Formatting, or DEPF, an advanced de-interlacing process, provides superior quality video playback. For audio, the MS9410 capabilities include MP3, AAC-LC and Windows Media Audio (WMA). In addition, the MS9410 can rip CD audio into MP3 files at faster-than-realtime, enabling consumers to create a library of their favorite audio content in their home entertainment systems.

There are two ATAPI interfaces on the chip to enable simultaneous optical and hard disk connections, with high-speed dubbing between the two drives. The MS9410 also integrates a USB 2.0 OTG High-Speed MAC and PHY and fully supports host and slave modes in mass storage, audio and video classes. It allows many options for external memory, from USB hard drives to small flash memory drives, and provides facilities for connecting to a variety of popular consumer platforms or computer networks.

Steve Musallam, vice president of marketing for consumer products at Magnum, said: “The MS9410 brings new value to consumer video solutions with its enhanced video technology, and the ability to connect to so many other platforms and peripherals such as external storage devices, digital cameras and camcorders, cell phones and personal media players. The transition from analog to digital broadcasts creates vibrant new markets for consumer entertainment products. The MS9410 integrates all of the functions needed to capitalize on the emergence of digital video in the consumer’s home.”

Magnum offers a full software stack for the MS9410, including DVD authoring and playback, time-shifting, networking, and USB drivers. There is a digital broadcast solution for the MS9410 platform, with full support for the European DVB-T format including fully certified MHEG5. “Magnum provides the most comprehensive software and platform solution of any chip vendor in this field, helping our customers get market-leading products into consumer’s hands more quickly,” Musallam added.

The MS9410 is packaged in a 21x21mm 472 BGA package optimized for 2-layer PCB layout for cost-conscious consumer applications. It is available now for samples and volume production.