NEWS

For Release on January 28, 1998

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

VISICOM DEMONSTRATES VIGRAVISION AT PHOTONICS WEST AND RTC
Powerful Product Includes Color Frame Grabbing and Real-Time Image Processing

January 28, 1998, SAN JOSE, CA - At this year’s Photonics West show, VisiCom is demonstrating 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, which was first shown in prototype form at Photonics East, is now in production and will ship to customers within the next 30 days. "Our OEM customers have been developing applications using VigraVision prototypes," states Gene Kennon, vice president of marketing at VisiCom. "We are all very excited about the ability to deploy these products now that VigraVision is in production."

Product Overview
VigraVision combines accelerated graphics, real-time image processing and frame grabbing onto a single PCI bus card so OEM customers can quickly and easily create full-featured imaging applications. The base product includes the ability to capture standard NTSC and PAL video signals in composite or component (S-Video) formats.

The Variable Scan Analog Input Option adds high speed 10 bit grayscale input and up to 40 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 Models 1.4i, 1.6i, 4.2i and ES 1.0, as well as the Pulnix Model TM1000 and TM9700. Other digital camera interfaces are under development.

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

"VigraVision builds on the success of our earlier products" states Eli Warsawski, Director of Imaging Products at VisiCom. "It takes our customers to the next level by providing support for full color input. High speed analog and digital input performance have also been improved to meet the needs of the most demanding applications."

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. When 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. In September 1997, VisiCom acquired Univision Technologies, a leading provider of hardware and software for imaging applications. This acquisition let to the creation of VisiCom’s Imaging Products Division.

VisiCom is headquartered in San Diego, CA and has offices in Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Virginia, Washington and the United Kingdom.

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