New Digital Video Technology

MGI Software has announced MaxMedia, a new software technology that capitalizes on the processing capability of Intelís forthcoming Pentium III processor to digitize, compress, save and play back media content, whether broadcast TV, cable, DVD movies or CD audio.MaxMedia relies on Intelís Streaming Single Instruction Multiple Data Extensions with Floating Point, which is the core of the Pentium III processor. These new memory-streaming instructions allow Max Media to simultaneously encode and decode MPEG-2 video in real-time at half D-1 resolution at 30 frames per second. The technology offers what the company says is a truly spectacular digital movie theatre experience. Computers equipped with the MaxMedia feature and a TV tuner or S-Video input, are transformed into a Digital VCR with the ability to pause, fast forward, rewind and have ""instant replay"" with pan zoom of live television programming or videotaped movies. With the WebTV for Windows feature of Microsoft Windows 98 operating system, MaxMedia supports one-click electronic programming via the Internet, giving viewers total control over TV program schedules as the MaxMedia software automatically finds and captures TV shows and stores them digitally for playback from the PCís hard drive.