VideoLogic ZXR-500 Surround Sound Speaker System

The perfect partner for any 5.1 channel soundcard, ZXR-500 transforms any PC into a thundering home cinema and surround sound gaming system. The ZXR-500 is a powerful 5.1 channel speaker system, engineered to provide all the thrills of surround sound audio, whether it is enhancing the earth-trembling sound effects in movies, blasting out gut-wrenching explosions in the latest games or pumping out stomping music. Using years of professional audio experience, gained through development of VideoLogic’s award winning DigiTheatre and Sirocco ranges, this compact powerhouse has been engineered to outperform systems costing more than twice as much. With five powerful discrete satellite speakers and a stylish subwoofer with integrated 5.1 power amplifier, ZXR-500 delivers serious sound.

Shipping this month ZXR-500 has already won awards including PCW Highly Commended (May 2002) and PC Games Hardware Award für sehr gutes Preis-Lesitungsverhältnis (April 2002).

The stylish silver ZXR-500 provides outstanding quality audio for surround sound games and movies for just £79.99 (inc. tax UK) / €139 (inc. tax Germany).

Says Kevin Dale, president, VideoLogic: “This 5.1 channel speaker system with its powerful dual-ported subwoofer provides VideoLogic quality at a price that makes outstanding six-channel game and movie audio accessible to everyone. ZXR-500 is the ideal companion to any 6-channel soundcard, or home DVD player¹.”

ZXR-500 includes dual flared subwoofer bass ports and a tuned amplifier for precise imaging. Individual volume controls and sturdy speaker stands ensure that its impressive 65W of power is delivered where and how the user wants it. The comprehensive package includes everything needed to get up and running quickly with connecting cables, satellite speaker stands and a clear, concise user guide.

The ZXR-500’s powerful 25W RMS subwoofer features two tuned bass ports ensuring distortion-free bass. The integrated amplifier has individual front panel volume controls and built-in low-noise power supply.

Separate volume controls enable complete control of front, rear, centre and subwoofer speakers for a balanced ‘natural’ sound. Magnetically shielded speakers prevent interference with PCs and other electronic equipment.

ZXR-500’s professional styling provides a stunning mix of form and function with a stylish matt silver finish that complements PC, DVD, video or hi-fi kit and looks good in any room.

The system is Dolby Digital, DTS and Pro Logic compatible with six separate phono inputs and a carefully tuned amplifier to take full advantage of the sound from a 5.1 enabled sound card or decoder. Increasing numbers of games, DVD movies and music are recorded using these surround sound audio technologies.

ZXR-500 is fast and easy to set up with plug-and-play speaker wiring (3m fronts and centre, 8m rears), three dual phono to 3.5 mm cables for PC connection, clearly labelled connectors and clear, concise instructions. Five satellite speaker stands are included to provide stable speaker positioning.

ZXR-500 is supplied with an excellent support package including a two year warranty backed up by a technical hotline and website support.

PowerVR® MBX

PowerVR MBX will enable the migration of modern 3D and video graphics content to embedded platforms including mobile devices, personal digital assistants, set-top boxes and car information and entertainment systems.

The PowerVR MBX family of off-the-shelf embedded 3D, 2D and video acceleration cores includes: PowerVR MBX Pro for very high-performance high-end 2D/3D graphics enabled set-top boxes and home entertainment systems; PowerVR MBX with best area/performance for power-critical handheld devices and mainstream set-top boxes; and PowerVR MBX Lite for the most power-critical, cost-sensitive, entry-level mobile applications.

PowerVR MBX is a complete 2D/3D graphics solution for future wireless multimedia devices optimised for low power and high performance. The demonstration platform consists of an ARM 920 processor with PowerVR MBX in FPGA technology, with a 320x240 LCD display, and clearly demonstrates the high performance and market leading image quality of an ARM / PowerVR Technologies 2D/3D graphics solution.

Imagination Technologies expects that the PowerVR MBX technology, which is available for licensing from ARM for integration with ARM cores and is a key component of the STMicroelectronics Pocket Multimedia (PMM) platform, will become the leading graphics solution for next generation mobile computing and communication devices. A companion vertex geometry processor (VGP) is also available for transform and lighting (T&L) operations.

John Metcalfe, VP Business Development, PowerVR Technologies says: “PowerVR MBX has remarkable competitive strengths with all the inherent benefits of PowerVR, including low memory bandwidth requirements, exceptional image quality and performance as well as low-power demands.”

PowerVR MBX, implemented in 0.13-micron process, will feature high-performance 3D, 2D and video graphics processing (up to 4 million triangles/second at 120 MHz) in a small area (around 6mm2 of silicon in an SoC solution), with exceptionally low-power consumption (less than 60 mW at a clock speed of 50 MHz). Because PowerVR’s processing architecture minimizes external memory bandwidth requirements it is ideal for use in System on Chip (SoC) solutions integrated alongside a microprocessor and a single unified memory architecture.

PowerVR MBX Features

• PowerVR MBX includes all the features of the latest generation of PowerVR technology including:
• Scene Manager™ - seamless scene complexity management to support arbitrarily complex scenes in limited memory footprint applications
• FSAA4Free™ - full screen anti aliasing with no performance loss delivers a significant improvement in visual quality by using high resolution rendering and filtered scaling. The result is smoother, more realistic graphics at mobile resolutions
• ITC™ - Internal True Colour operations performed on chip at 32 bpp for superior colour precision
• PVR-TC™ - PowerVR Texture Compression
• AHB Interface for ARM bus architectures
• Optimisation for UMA (Unified Memory Architectures)

PowerVR MBX also enables all key 3D features, including: Flat and Gouraud shading; Perspective texturing and shading; Specular highlights; 2 Layer Multitexturing support; 32-bit Z/Stencil buffer; Full tile blend buffer; Effective fill rates that increase with 3D complexity; Per vertex fog; 16-bit textures; 32-bit textures; Point, bilinear, trilinear and anisotropic filtering; Full range of blend modes; Alpha test.

PowerVR Technologies designs 2D and 3D graphics technologies for use across a wide variety of consumer platforms, from games consoles, arcade machines and personal computers to mobile devices and set top boxes. The PowerVR approach to 3D graphics starts from the premise that taking a different algorithmic approach to 3D processing can eliminate all redundant processing and memory bottlenecks. This revolutionary approach keeps as much processing as possible on-chip minimising costly accesses to off chip memory and improving performance. This unique technique of tile-based deferred texturing has been successfully patented worldwide.

Vivid!XS Elite™ Graphics Card

The VideoLogic Vivid!XS Elite is a fully-featured, high-performance graphics card for gamers at an affordable price with blazing games performance, future proof technology, full support for industry-standard game APIs like Microsoft® Direct3D™ and OpenGL™, a fast 128-bit 2D engine, hardware video playback, TV output and DVD decode acceleration.

Based on KYRO II SE™ PowerVR graphics processor the Vivid!XS Elite offers advanced graphics features including EnT&L™ Enhanced T&L and Smarter Rendering Technology to maximise speed and minimise redundant rendering. The RRP of the 64MB Vivid!XS Elite is just £119 (inc. VAT) / €199 (inc. tax Germany).

Kevin Dale, president, VideoLogic Systems, says: “For high-intensity gaming the KYRO II SE based Vivid!XS Elite provides outstanding performance and specification with an wide range of unique features including Textur8™ eight-layer multitexturing as well as enormous effective fill rates, intense scene complexity and the dazzling visual quality of full 32-bit rendering.”

Vivid!XS features stunning 3D effects including:

• EnT&L™
  To deliver optimal cost-performance KYRO II SE supports the new EnT&L driver technology which unites the advanced features of KYRO II SE with transform and lighting to provide superior performance to cost comparable solutions. EnT&L is optimized for KYRO II SE AGP 4X SBA operation and Implicit Guard Band Clipping.
• Smarter Rendering Technology
  As game complexity increases, so does overdraw, resulting in performance decreases on traditional graphics architectures. KYRO II SE’s PowerVR architecture utilizes a smarter rendering technology, which defers texturing to ensure that only graphics information that will be visible on screen is processed. This smarter graphics architecture allows KYRO II SE to outperform cost-comparative graphics solutions based on traditional graphics architectures. Smarter rendering technology also ensures that as game complexity increases KYRO II SE based cards will remain a more effective performance solution than graphics cards based on traditional architectures. KYRO II SE’s smarter rendering technology is fully transparent under DirectX and OGL ensuring that games designers can take advantage of its performance features without additional programming and KYRO II SE’s smarter rendering technology can improve performance on all DirectX and OGL compatible games titles.
• Textur8™
  With Textur8 KYRO II SE fully supports single pass 8-layer multitexturing – the maximum allowed in DirectX 8.1 – significantly improving on the texturing capabilities of traditional accelerators. With its support of multiple texture layers, KYRO II SE allows more detailed backgrounds, realistically lit models, and more plausible environments to be created. When compared with traditional accelerators, KYRO II SE’s 8-layer multitexturing results in significant performance and quality improvements. Single pass 8-layer multitexturing is currently only available on KYRO family products and traditional renderers have to perform multiple passes to achieve the same effects, which reduces performance and degrades image quality.
• TrueRender™ OnChip FSAA
  KYRO II SE provides pixel-perfect FSAA with zero memory footprint allowing class-leading FSAA performance and enhanced image quality without requiring the large amounts of additional memory for FSAA data storage needed by traditional renderers. This frees KYRO II SE board memory for other uses, like storage of larger and more complex textures. KYRO II SE makes use of TrueRender OnChip to implement both 2X and 4X high quality Full Scene Anti-Aliasing.
• Bump Map Complete™
  KYRO II SE’s BMC bump-mapping engine provides the most complete support for DirectX 8.1 bump mapping features of any graphics card in its class with support for EMBM, Dot3 and Embossed bump mapping. BMC adds significant realism to 3D rendered scenes by allowing the developer to create the illusion of depth on a surface.
• KYRO II SE’s Environment Bump Mapping uses per pixel operations to represent detail on any polygon. As KYRO II SE’s Environment Bump Mapping is fully DirectX 8.1 compliant, developers are able to use it to create a wide range of effects including making metal, plastic, rubber, or other objects look real. KYRO II SE also supports Dot3 bump mapping for additional shading detail within polygons and per-pixel lighting as well as embossed bump mapping for the maximum compatibility with the latest 3D titles.
• Internal True Colour®
  All of KYRO II SE’s pixel operations are rendered on chip at full 32-bit Internal True Colour resolution, maintaining the best possible image quality irrespective of the number of image layers or frame buffer bit depth. When operating in 16bpp frame buffer, KYRO II SE avoids the colour banding or grainy effects seen on traditional hardware, and the consumer receives best game performance without sacrificing visual quality. Internal True Colour also saves memory bandwidth whatever the colour depth, thus enabling KYRO to provide class-leading performance in 32bpp modes.
• Vivid!XS Elite’s PowerVR technology thrives on complex 3D games – its effective fillrate actually increasing as the games gets more complex, drawing increasingly ‘deep’ and complete 3D worlds. At an average image depth complexity of four (typical of new 3D games) Vivid!XS Elitre provides an effective fill rate of 1.4 gigapixels per second. Vivid!XS Elite includes 64MB of high performance SDRAM memory and its PowerVR KYRO II SE graphics processor has support for resolutions up to 1920X1440 (@ 60 Hz refresh), 200MHz clock-speed, and 4X AGP support.
• TV output
  Vivid!XS Elite can connect to any television, VCR or projector to display games and DVD movies in full-screen format or tape game sequences and videos for digital editing. The Vivid!XS Elite retail package also includes the latest version of InterVideo’s award-winning, fully-featured WinDVD software for high-quality software DVD playback.

Vivid!XS Elite is backed up by the very best in free lifetime support including: technical support hotlines; Internet based support; and a five year hardware warranty.

KYRO II SE™ Graphics Processor

The PowerVR KYRO II SE processor, rated at 200 MHz, delivers an outstanding combination of frame rate performance and image quality, thanks to an architecture that makes extremely efficient use of the available memory bandwidth and incorporates a host of sophisticated features that support user demand for ever-increasing scene complexity. PowerVR technology typically requires less than one third of the memory bandwidth required by conventional 3D accelerators, which allows content developers to focus on realistic environments rather than having to resort to programming tricks to reduce scene complexity and image quality, which are required to improve frame rate with traditional 3D accelerators.

PowerVR takes a different algorithmic approach to 3D, aiming to eliminate redundant processing and avoid memory bottlenecks. By doing only what is absolutely necessary, and by keeping as much 3D processing as possible on-chip, PowerVR allows maximum performance to be extracted from the available memory bandwidth, enabling KYRO II SE to not only deliver exhilarating performance today, but also to keep pace with users’ escalating demands for higher visual quality.

KYRO II SE Features

• EnT&L™
  To deliver optimal cost-performance KYRO II SE supports the new EnT&L driver technology which unites the advanced features of KYRO II SE with transform and lighting to provide superior performance to cost comparable solutions. EnT&L is optimized for KYRO II SE AGP 4X SBA operation and Implicit Guard Band Clipping.
• Smarter Rendering Technology
  As game complexity increases, so does overdraw, resulting in performance decreases on traditional graphics architectures. KYRO II SE’s PowerVR architecture utilizes a smarter rendering technology, which defers texturing to ensure that only graphics information that will be visible on screen is processed. This smarter graphics architecture allows KYRO II SE to outperform cost-comparative graphics solutions based on traditional graphics architectures. Smarter rendering technology also ensures that as game complexity increases KYRO II SE based cards will remain a more effective performance solution than graphics cards based on traditional architectures. KYRO II SE’s smarter rendering technology is fully transparent under DirectX and OGL ensuring that games designers can take advantage of its performance features without additional programming and KYRO II SE’s smarter rendering technology can improve performance on all DirectX and OGL compatible games titles.
• Textur8™
  With Textur8 KYRO II SE fully supports single pass 8-layer multitexturing – the maximum allowed in DirectX 8.1 – significantly improving on the texturing capabilities of traditional accelerators. With its support of multiple texture layers, KYRO II SE allows more detailed backgrounds, realistically lit models, and more plausible environments to be created. When compared with traditional accelerators, KYRO II SE’s 8-layer multitexturing results in significant performance and quality improvements. Single pass 8-layer multitexturing is currently only available on KYRO family products and traditional renderers have to perform multiple passes to achieve the same effects, which reduces performance and degrades image quality.
• TrueRender™ OnChip FSAA
  KYRO II SE provides pixel-perfect FSAA with zero memory footprint allowing class-leading FSAA performance and enhanced image quality without requiring the large amounts of additional memory for FSAA data storage needed by traditional renderers. This frees KYRO II SE board memory for other uses, like storage of larger and more complex textures. KYRO II SE makes use of TrueRender OnChip to implement both 2X and 4X high quality Full Scene Anti-Aliasing.
• Bump Map Complete™
  KYRO II SE’s Bump Map Complete bump-mapping engine provides the most complete support for DirectX 8.1 bump mapping features of any graphics card in its class with support for EMBM, Dot3 and Embossed bump mapping. Bump Map Complete adds significant realism to 3D rendered scenes by allowing the developer to create the illusion of depth on a surface.
• KYRO II SE’s Environment Bump Mapping uses per pixel operations to represent detail on any polygon. As KYRO II SE’s Environment Bump Mapping is fully DirectX 8.1 compliant, developers are able to use it to create a wide range of effects including making metal, plastic, rubber, or other objects look real. KYRO II SE also supports Dot3 bump mapping for additional shading detail within polygons and per-pixel lighting as well as embossed bump mapping for the maximum compatibility with the latest 3D titles.
• Internal True Colour®
  All of KYRO II SE’s pixel operations are rendered on chip at full 32-bit Internal True Colour resolution, maintaining the best possible image quality irrespective of the number of image layers or frame buffer bit depth. When operating in 16bpp frame buffer, KYRO II SE avoids the colour banding or grainy effects seen on traditional hardware, and the consumer receives best game performance without sacrificing visual quality. Internal True Colour also saves memory bandwidth whatever the colour depth, thus enabling KYRO to provide class-leading performance in 32bpp modes.

PowerVR KYRO II SE also includes a fast 128-bit 2D engine, hardware video playback and DVD decode assistance, AGP 4x Bus Master Interface, a 128-bit SGRAM/SDRAM interface with up to 64 MB support, and integrated Palette DAC. A video input port allows connection to a wide range of video source and capture peripherals, while a digital video output port provides glueless connection to flat panel displays and TV encoders.