Alliance targets advanced digital entertainment

A-Max Technology is to support TI's DSP technology for developing and manufacturing two advanced portable digital entertainment products.

A-Max Technology is to support TI's DSP technology for developing and manufacturing two advanced portable digital entertainment products.

Bringing together these two leaders in the portable digital entertainment hardware market will provide manufacturers with low cost, high quality, production-ready products to help speed time to market and ease design issues.

Building on its experience in design, development, manufacturing and distribution of high quality portable digital media products, A-Max has expanded its product design offerings beyond basic MP3 players to advanced digital entertainment centres.

TI's DSP-based technology enables A-Max to reach new markets and offer manufacturers feature-rich portable media player and audio jukeboxes.

Original equipment manufacturers can contact A-Max now to begin development on these portable entertainment applications.

"Building on our leadership in the MP3 player market, TI has enabled us to enter new product markets that will allow us to differentiate our devices", said Victor Chan, CEO of A-Max.

"Together, we are introducing a new level of product features and functionality that has previously been unavailable, helping us expand our offerings and opening up new doors in portable entertainment".

With TI's digital media processors, A-Max is now able to supply OEMs with production-ready portable media players (PMP).

TI works with its vast third party network to provide all of the building blocks and software tools for feature-rich devices, supporting the most popular video, audio and imaging formats, including D1 resolution for movies, high resolution digital images and video encoding.

The PMP can record from or display to a TV, and it can store and play full-length movies on its colour display - making it a virtual video store and movie theatre in the palm of the hand.

Leveraging TI's comprehensive DSP-based digital audio processor, A-Max can pack the most advanced digital entertainment functionality available into an audio HDD player that can fit in a shirt pocket.

This TI-enabled audio jukebox can play and record all of the most popular audio formats, as well as support games and play MJPEG and MPEG-4 movies and display BMP and JPEG images in full colour on the player.

Devices based on TI's DSP-based solutions are programmable and can be updated through software upgrades to incorporate new features and functionality, helping differentiate the product from its competitors.

In addition, TI's low-power, high performance DSP can handle all of the processing required for a portable player with overhead remaining, allowing manufacturers to differentiate their products by adding more features.

For instance, an audio HDD player is now able to incorporate slideshows, which can be created on the device by attaching a music playlist to a series of photos and then shown on the colour LCD.

"By partnering with leading design manufacturers like A-Max, TI can expand its reach in the portable digital entertainment market", said Raj Talluri, Worldwide Manager of the Imaging and Audio Group, Texas Instruments.

"As the portable entertainment market continues to evolve, the demand to provide OEMs with production-ready devices is steadily increasing".

"A-Max will help TI meet customers' needs to get to market quickly with high performance products, while reducing system design complexity and manufacturing costs".

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