Pixelworks was in the Westgate hotel, in a suite. The first product that we looked at was a dongle that supports the company’s VueMagic Media Pro technology when connected to the HDMI port of a device and a USB port (for power). The company said that the dongle allows projector makers to support the app/device sharing over wireless features of VueMagic, without needing to put into every projector. This could be helpful in meeting the lower prices at the bottom of the market. It also means that projector makers that want to extend VueMagic technology to flat panel displays can do so, easily.
The system has been updated to use H.264 compression, rather than MJPEG which has been used before, and will cost around $50 to the end customer.
We have previously reported that Pixelworks had developed software technology to improve motion, colour and gaming. Further demos at the show were of an Asus phone, compared to an iPhone, which showed much improved motion video. The technology was also being used in the suite to show how the EOTF (gamma) could be adjusted to make OLED displays look much better in OLED displays when they are being used in high ambient brightness. The colour management can also be used to reduce the level of blue light and a demonstration was being shown of a mobile device being run at 2700ºK.
Finally, we heard that Pixelworks has developed a server-side processor that is a plug in that can pre-process video before compression to either offer better performance or reduce the bandwidth used for a given quality. The pre-processor supplies metadata alongside the video stream.
Analyst Comment
We weren’t sure about a plug in for video being supported by a service provider, but the ability for a service provider to deliver better video for the particular handsets that they want to promote could be a positive move. I could see how, for example, a TMobile could optimise for a particular handset to drive the choice of that handset. (BR)
