StarCore and Hantro announce immediate availability of high performance H.264 video decoder

February 13th, 2006 -- StarCore LLC, a leading provider of processor intellectual property (IP) and Hantro Products Oy, a leading supplier of video software and hardware solutions today announced the immediate availability of an optimized H.264 software video decoder for the StarCore SC2400 processor. Placing a load of only 64MHz to decode CIF resolution (352x288) at 30 fps, the decoder can achieve up to D1 resolution performance on the StarCore SC2400 processor.

This solution is ideal for mobile multimedia applications, such as cellular phones and other mobile video devices, as well as other digital video applications such as cable and satellite set-top boxes, DVD players, home gateways and media centre PCs. Industry analyst company eMarketer projects that the number of people accessing video over mobile devices in the U.S. will grow from just over 1 million to over 15 million in 2009.

Hantro’s H.264 decoder (part number 6100) is fully compliant with ITU-T Recommendation H.264 Baseline Profile up to Level 5.1.. Developed by the Moving Joint Video Team (JVT), H.264 /AVC provides significant quality vs. bitrate improvements over previous video compression standards. In today's digital networks where limited transmission bandwidth and storage capacities are further stressed by the consumers demand for higher video quality and resolutions, the higher levels of data compression enabled by the H.264 / AVC standard deliver the optimal solution.

“Optimizing our software H.264 decoder for the StarCore SC2400 was a natural choice for us' said Sami Niska, Director of Business Development at Hantro 'StarCore's design allows us to achieve resolutions and frame rates that are normally only associated with complete hardware implementations. The high resolution capability, flexibility and time-to-market advantages that the Hantro-StarCore combination brings makes it a very compelling solution for device manufacturers.”

“We are very pleased to be working with Hantro to bring easily adaptable video solutions to the market for our StarCore customers. The close relationship we have with Hantro is a good indication of our commitment to the fast-paced video market,” said Alex Bedarida, general manager of StarCore. “The StarCore technology, with its parallelism and efficient code size, is ideal for today’s feature-rich, mobile multimedia products.”

About StarCore LLC
StarCore LLC is a leader in the development of high-performance DSP architectures, processor cores and intellectual property building blocks for the communications and consumer electronics industries. For more information on StarCore LLC and its intellectual property and services, visit the company’s website at http://www.starcore-dsp.com.