Vweb Corporation (San Jose, CA - 408-615-1888) has debuted the MPEG-2 A/V express board. Using Vweb's VW2000 Video Encoder chip (launched last November), the board compresses audio and video for storage and network apps within a PC environment. Its main application is video-over-IP.

The board takes S-video or composite video along with analog audio as inputs and performs MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 compression. It fits into a standard PCI slot and includes a Windows-based GUI, Windows 98/2000 WDM drivers or Linux drivers. It uses a Pentium 233MHz processor or better for full resolution MPEG-2 encoding, and can find wide use in video multicasting, and streaming video to web. The encoder chip will be compatible for video servers, digital video camcorders, personal video recorders, video capture and editing cards, and digital entertainment applications.

The board's video encoder chip is about half the size of its competition, using only 4 MB of SDRAM, with a 32-bit SDRAM interface. VW2000 is quick to market because of its easy setup and low microcode requirement: less than 16 KB. The unit price of the A/V encoder card is $900, based on 10,000-piece quantities.

The A/V express board fits into a standard PCI slot and includes Vweb's native or Solaris 8 drivers. It doesn't use the PC's power during operations. Video is distributed over 1394, DVB-ASI, DSL, cable, satellite, terrestrial, 10/100T/G-bit Ethernet, ISDN, T1, T3, ATM, OC3, OC48, and OC192 networks. The company claims DVD-quality.

The A/V Encoder Reference Design Kit is also available and lists for $8,000.

Enter 310 at www.cConvergence.com/productinfo