NEWS

For Release on September 16, 1997

Contact: Karen Johnson
VisiCom
(619) 457-2111
Web: http://www.visicom.com
Email: kj@visicom.com

VISICOM INTRODUCES VIGRAVISION
Powerful Product Includes Color Frame Grabbing and Real-Time Image Processing

SEPTEMBER 16, 1997, SAN DIEGO, CA - VisiCom announced today the availability of VigraVision™, a powerful, affordable new imaging product combining a Color Frame Grabber, Real-Time Image Processing, Accelerated SVGA Display Controller, and NTSC/PAL Video Output. VigraVision is now available from VisiCom, who in a separate release, announced the acquisition of Univision Technologies, Inc. (Boston, MA), developer of VigraVision and the Falcon-XL product line, and provider of advanced hardware and software products for real-time image acquisition, processing and display.

VigraVision will be demonstrated this month at the Vision Show (September 16-18) in Santa Clara, and at Photonics East (September 23-25) in Boston, MA.

"We are very proud to be announcing this product today, as well as our acquisition of Univision Technologies, developers of VigraVision," stated Gene Kennon, vice president of marketing at VisiCom. "VigraVision represents the next generation of image processing to take our customers into the future. VigraVision and all other Univision products offer a valuable, logical extension to our established line of video, audio and graphics products, providing a new set of powerful products to address our core markets. We are also looking forward to opening up new markets where image processing is key in capturing large amounts of visual information for enhancement, analysis, and display, to augment the critical decision making process in areas such as medical x-rays, electronic microscope image enhancement, and luggage inspection."

Product Overview
The VigraVision expands on the Falcon-XL’s capabilities in a number of significant areas. First, while the Falcon-XL was designed as a grayscale frame grabber, the VigraVision includes full color frame grabbing capabilities. The Variable Scan Analog Input Option adds high speed 10 bit grayscale input and up to 60 Mhz input speed, which supports the capture of 1024x1024 images at a full 30 frames per second.

For high-speed digital input, the VigraVision can be configured with either one or two optional Digital Video Interfaces. These input ports, which provide data transfers at up to 40 MegaBytes per second (Mbps), support a number of digital cameras including the Kodak MEGAPLUS Modelss 1.4i, 1.6i, 4.2i and ES 1.0, as well as the Pulnix Model TM1000.

As with all VisiCom imaging products, the VigraVision includes a non-destructive overlay capability. In this case the overlay can be 8-, 16-, or 24-bits, depending on the SVGA resolution and color depth being used. At every resolution and color depth, the overlay can be panned and scrolled independently from image memory.

For output, the VigraVision uses the state-of-the-art S3 Virge GX2 graphics display. This high-performance chipset provides accelerated 2D and 3D performance under Windows 95 and Windows NT. In addition, the VigraVision provides standard video output in both composite (NTSC/PAL) and component (S-Video) formats, eliminating the need for an external scan converter in many cases.

"Univision has an established reputation as an industry leader in providing FPGA-based image processing technology to address a wide variety of markets, including medical and industry imaging, microscopy and simulation," stated Eli Warsawski, former president of Univision and new director of Imaging Products at VisiCom. "By joining forces with VisiCom, an industry leader in video, audio and graphics board technology, we are now able to take a products even further than before. VigraVision starts this process, taking our customers to the next level by providing support for full color input. High speed analog and digital input performance have been improved to meet the needs of the most demanding applications."

"The union of VisiCom and Univision will allow us to move beyond, providing us with the financial, manufacturing, and additional engineering resources to make us the premier developer and supplier of imaging technology for commercial, industrial and military applications," continued Warsawski.

The VigraVision includes 4 MegaBytes (MB) of SGRAM for image display and 16 MB of DRAM for image processing and other memory functions. The DRAM can be expanded to 64 MB if desired. Whe used for image processing, the VigraVision supports a large number of real-time functions such as frame averaging, image sharpening, rotation and more. The VigraVision also acts as a PCI Bus Master with a burst transfer rate of up to 107 MBps. In addition to drivers for Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT, the product can also be used in AIX (UNIX) 4.0, Sun Solaris, and Wind River Systems’ VX-Works™ real-time operating system using VisiCom’s RtX-Windows scalable graphics package.

Corporate Background
VisiCom is a $40M hardware and software product innovator, value-added reseller, and systems engineering corporation dedicated to providing real-time, open architecture embedded solutions for industry and government computing worldwide. VisiCom is headquartered in San Diego, CA and has offices in Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Virginia, Washington and the United Kingdom.

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