October 5th, 2005 by Chi An
SigmaTel was famous with their integrated solution once ago, especially for those models at low/mid price range. However, Sigmatel’s solutions are less preferable nowadays as they were claimed that they don’t supports video playback. There are more and more models are made with ATJ20852085 - a low cost solution from Actions.
Thanks to Socany - a Chinese MP3 player manufacturer, Sigmatel are now able to play video files. Their engineers have managed to develop new firmware that may supports video playback. With this new feature, it means that we may see more variations in low/mid end MP3 players with color LCD in near future. SigmaTel will definitely take back the market share soon as they have better quality!
{ via
iMP3.net }
August 18th, 2005 by Chi An
Most of the Korean prefer made in Korea in any kind of stuffs, even a small component insides MP3 players. Because of this strong sense of nationalism, they come out with a reputable brand, Telechips, in the digital audio player industry.
Generally, its position is between
Sigmatel and
Philips‘ decoders. It has better sound quality than Sigmatel and yet it can still maintain lower price than Philips. Due to the stragegic position, Telechips has the supports from many Korean manufacturers, such as
DATUM,
DEC,
WEWA, and so on. Thus, it makes Telechips a reputable brand in the industry.
The most common model of Telechips’ solution is
TCC73x series.
Read the rest of this entry »
August 8th, 2005 by Chi An
Last few days, we had discussed about the Sigmatel. Now it’s the turn of another techonology leader of audio decoder - Philips. How good is Philips decoder? Just have a look on how well do the iRiver and MPIO perform.
The popularPhilips decoder on the market are
SAA775x and
PNX010x series. These audio decoders are embedded with a 24 bits DSP core and 32bits ARM processor. The ARM is to process the calculation of audio decompression algorithms of various formats such as MP3, AAC and WMA. On the other hand, the DSP core is to process the audio enrichment algorithms that supports Philips’
LifeVibes.
Read the rest of this entry »
August 3rd, 2005 by Chi An
Today we gonna to learn more on the core of MP3 player, digital audio decoder. MP3 is a lossy compression audio format. Thus, the audio decoder of the MP3 players take an important role. A decent audio decoder should minimize signal distortion compare to its source during the reproduction. And we will look at few big brands in popular in the market. The first will be SigmaTel, the one that just taken over Rio.
SigmaTel have gained the first place in the flash-based MP3 player market segment with its
STMP34XX and
STMP35XX series. SigmaTel is the first to provide single chip solution. With all-in-one features and “
not that bad” sound quality, SigmaTel’s chips have gained lots of favors of many manufacturers. It minimizes the cost of production and also allows smaller size to be done!
Read the rest of this entry »
May 25th, 2005 by Chi An
With initial applications targeted for implementation within SigmaTel STMP35xx MP3 player solutions, the STIR4230 will also be available for non-music applications including cell phones, digital still cameras, in-store kiosks and printers.
SigmaTel is continuing to build upon its core technologies to bring to market products that will provide portable applications with wireless transfer methods for large files such as digital music and photos. This latest offering expands the company’s range and allows our customers to easily implement wireless, secure functionality within their devices.
The STIR4230 differs from previous SigmaTel IrDA devices in that it is designed for use in portable and other embedded applications and not only as a PC peripheral. The product, with VFIR speeds, is the ideal method of transferring digital music and photos between portable devices.
{ via SigmaTel Press Release }
