Toshiba and Sigma Designs Join Forces To Turn PCs Into Full-featured DVD Players

DVD-ROM Kit Enhanced with REALmagic Hollywood Plus Playback Card for Flicker-free Video, Realistic Dolby Digital Surround Sound

FREMONT, CA -- (September 14, 1998) -- Sigma Designs®, Inc. (Nasdaq: SIGM) strengthened its lead in the DVD/MPEG-2 playback card industry today with the announcement that the Disk Products Division (DPD) of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC) has selected its REALmagic Hollywood Plus playback card for the new Toshiba DVD-ROM kit. Specifically designed for value-added resellers (VARs) and system integrators (SIs), the DVD kit is based on Toshiba's 4.8X SD-M1202 DVD-ROM drive and includes all of the omponents needed for remarkably smooth, high-quality MPEG-2 digital video playback, realistic Dolby®; Digital Surround Sound, and storage for volumes of data and images.

"Sigma Designs' REALmagic Hollywood Plus DVD/MPEG-2 playback card was chosen because of its analog overlay technology, ease-of-installation, and overall performance," said Maciek Brzeski, vice president, marketing, TAEC DPD. "Sigma's cutting-edge solution supports Toshiba's goal of providing its VAR and SI customers with a high-performance, easy-to-integrate DVD solution. It's the perfect complement to Toshiba's DVD-ROM drive."

With Sigma's advanced analog-overlay technology, integrators can be confident that their customers will be able to enjoy the full-motion video available with any VGA card. Other solutions that do not include analog overlay cannot deliver full-screen video, are incompatible with many VGA cards and motherboards, or may not work with all resolutions and bit depths.

REALmagic Hollywood Plus enables the sharpest video possible at resolutions from 640 x 480dpi to 1600 x 1200dpi. It consistently displays 24-bit video, even when working with a VGA card in 256 color mode.

Designed with robust system silicon, REALmagic can handle all of the complex video and audio streams without placing any burden on the computer's CPU. As a result, the PC runs at maximum performance at all times; multitasking (e.g., having DVD, live TV broadcast feeds, and interactive web browsing open in concurrent windows) is possible with the Hollywood Plus card.

"Toshiba's selection of our REALmagic card is an endorsement of Sigma's technology expertise and market presence," said William K. Wong, vice president of marketing for Sigma Designs. "Being included in Toshiba's DVD-ROM kit strengthens our efforts to reach the installed base of 100 million Pentium PCs that can be upgraded with DVD capability."

Broad Compatibility, Ease of Use Available as an OEM product, Sigma's Hollywood DVD playback card works with any Intel Pentium 133 MHz (minimum) system without requiring a specialized graphic adapter. This capability and full compliance with DVD specifications make it the playback card of choice for PC manufacturers and DVD upgrade kit providers like Toshiba.

The REALmagic DVD card includes device drivers and Sigma Designs' DVD Station, an intuitive, easy to use program for DVD navigation and control. With DVD Station, PC users can take full advantage of every interactive DVD feature, using simple VCR-like controls to choose from multiple DVD settings such as sound track and subtitle language, viewing aspect ratios, and viewing angle. Users can also interact with DVD Station menus to exercise parental control and execute search commands, such as jumping to any point in a movie with the click of a button.

Upgrade Kit Based on High-Performance DVD-ROM Drive

The new kit includes the 4.8X SD-M1202, Toshiba's leading-edge DVD-ROM drive. The SD-M1202 offers transfer rates twice as fast as previous generations with a high-performance 4.8X speed playback for DVD-ROM (6,535 KB/sec.) media, which is equivalent to a 43.5X transfer for CD-ROM.

The SD-M1202 is the only DVD-ROM drive on the market to play back CD media at 32X (4,800KB/sec.). In addition, it's compatible with all CD media, including CD-R and CD-RW, allowing users to enjoy their existing CD library. The drive can also read all DVD software formats available today-from 4.7GB software to dual-sided, dual-layered 17GB packages.

The Toshiba DVD-ROM kit is an ideal solution for VARs and SIs, enabling them to provide a complete DVD PC playback package to both corporate and consumer end users.

About Sigma Designs

An acknowledged leader in the burgeoning multimedia market, Sigma Designs entered the multimedia market in 1993 with products based on the MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) standard for compressing and decompressing digital audio and video signals. Sigma is a driving force in advancement of the MPEG technology used in most multimedia PCs on the market today. Sigma Designs' products, marketed under the REALmagic trade name, include affordable MPEG decoding hardware used in PCs, notebook computers, and networked video applications. Sigma products are sold to PC OEMs and card makers worldwide. For additional information, call 800-845-8086 or 510-770-0100, fax 510-770-2640, or visit Sigma's web site at http://www.sigmadesigns.com.

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the PC-DVD market and the features and potential growth prospects of certain DVD/MPEG-2 products offered by the Company in this market, that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results of Sigma Designs may vary materially due to a number of factors including, but not limited to, the levels of orders from and the risk of cancellation of orders by significant customers, the ability of the Company's REALmagic EM8300 DVD/MPEG-2 decoder to compete with other technologies in these emerging markets, the risk that such product will not gain widespread acceptance or will be rendered obsolete by product offerings of competitors or by alternative technologies, and the risk that the Company will not meet price or time-to-market estimates due to production, manufacturing, or other delays.

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Editors and Analysts: For additional information, photographs and interviews, please contact Andy Marken, marken@cerf.net or 408-986-0100

REALmagic is a trademark and Sigma Designs is a registered trademark of Sigma Designs. Other products and companies referred to herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.