MPEG
Chris,
Xing Technology has a MPEG software compression tool and playback utility (or
possibly hardware playback card) for about $995. I don't have the details in
front of me and the latest number I have is quite old (805)473-0145, so maybe
someone can fill in the gaps and/or correct me. There's a couple of other
companies like Optibase (800)451-5101 who have hardware compression cards for
the PC ranging from $2k (non-realtime, low quality) to $20k (realtime, high
quality).
I personally have the Reelmagic Sigma MPEG playback card and I'm quite
impressed with the quality (sound and video, especially at double speed data
rates – 300kb/s) and it should improve over the next year. It blows away
anything I've seen on the PC sofar, at cd-rom data rates at least 🙂 I hear
rumours that display card manufacturers may well include MPEG chips with their
cards within a year if the technology takes off. Hopefully for nominal extra
cost.