News Release

VIA Announces New Enhanced Digital TV Encoder

Bringing PC-level resolution to the TV screen, the VIA VT1622A TV encoder enables the digital multimedia and information center in the living room

Taipei, Taiwan, 7 August 2003, - VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator and developer of silicon chip technologies and PC platform solutions, today announced the volume shipment of the VT1622A TV Encoder, the latest in the VIA Multimedia portfolio of digital TV encoder and display interface solutions with enhanced text resolution capabilities that will help drive digital entertainment into the living room.

Connectivity and content delivery requirements are growing ever more sophisticated, with increasing demand for the display of digital information and multimedia content on everyday television screens, a transition reflected in the rapidly emerging market for set top boxes. This acceleration in the convergence of PC systems and traditional home and business appliances has required the development of new technologies to bridge the digital-analog divide.

The VIA VT1622A digital TV encoder fulfills this function by enabling the display of digital information on analog television sets as well as the new generation of standard definition digital televisions (SDTV). With enhanced text quality over previous generations, the VIA VT1622A provides a high quality, flicker-free viewing experience across the key global video standards NTSC and PAL.

"The VIA VT1622A TV encoder will greatly enhance VIA's platform capabilities for total connectivity solutions for the home, office and school, such as through our EPIA series of small form factor mainboards," commented Steve Chen, Product Manager for VIA Multimedia and Executive Assistant to the CEO, VIA Technologies, Inc. "With its enhanced text resolution capabilities, this new TV Encoder will make it much easier for users to navigate their PC environments using non-PC display devices, and help maintain VIA's strong position in strategic markets such as set-top boxes where this feature is crucial."

About the VIA VT1622A Digital TV Encoder

The VIA VT1622A is a digital TV encoder with enhanced text quality to provide a high quality, flicker-free viewing experience for both NTSC and PAL television formats. The VT1622A also features VIA's ProScale™ multi-resolution scaler, a de-flicker filter, and digital video encoder. The VIA VT1622A receives signal data input in either RGB or YCrCb format and generates video data as composite, S-video, component interlaced and progressive scan output, enabling the use of digital television sets.

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