Pioneer and Sigma Designs to Work on Full-Featured Blu-ray Player

[Marwin]

Pioneer and Sigma Designs to Work on Full-Featured Blu-ray Player

Sigma Designs today announced it will work with Pioneer Corporation on the joint development of a full-featured Blu-ray DVD player using Sigma Designs' SMP8630 family of media processors.

"Pioneer intends to be the first company to offer a high-quality, Blu-ray DVD player that contains all the key features expected from a consumer product under our brand name," said Russ Johnston, senior vice president of marketing and product planning for the home entertainment division of Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. "Sigma's SMP8630 family of chipsets provides a virtual system-on-chip solution for the hardware portion, enabling us to focus on software development and value-added features that extend beyond basic operation."

Blu-ray is the leading standard in the market for next-generation, high-definition optical players, based on blue laser disc technology. Blu-ray allows consumers to view movies and other programs in high definition. In addition, Blu-ray Discs allow consumers to record HD programming from a cable, satellite or TV antenna. A Blu-ray Disc computer drive enables consumers to store up to 50 gigabytes at a time to back up data, photos, portable music files and home videos.

"Collaborating with Pioneer on an industry-first product was a natural relationship for Sigma," said Ken Lowe, vice president of strategic marketing, Sigma Designs. "Sigma is dedicated to creating the leading chipset for next-generation, high-definition optical players and we are excited to be working with such a respected consumer electronics company."

Availability

Pioneer plans to introduce the new Blu-ray DVD player in the first half of 2006.