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Leading a PC-to-TV revolution(Orange County Register, The (CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SANTA ANA, Calif. _ The problem with YouTube, Major League Baseball's MLB.TV or any other Internet video is that you end up trapped in front of your computer screen instead of your usual television-watching haven. Safi U. Qureshey wants to fix that. Qureshey, who may forever be known as the "S" in the 1980s Irvine, Calif., computer company AST Research, has spent the past three years developing a chip that will let any image or video that can be seen on a computer also be watched on a nearby TV. It works wirelessly. In any video format available. "We've solved the problem of taking video to TV," Qureshey said. Quartics Inc., which officially launched this month, developed the agnostic video chip to watch PC videos on a TV. Qureshey financed the first two years and attracted funding from two venture capital firms last year. Overall, "tens of millions" have gone into starting Quartics, according to Sherjil Ahmed, president and co-founder. The goal is to get companies that make TVs, computers, wireless access points, portable video players, cell phones and other gadgets to build the Quartics chip into the hardware without adding more than $100 to the price tag. "Safi's a pretty smart guy. He has a good track record," said Michael Kanellos, an editor at large for online media company C/NET News.com. "But are consumers going to pay that extra little bit to put the chip (in a TV)? (Quartics) needs to have a technical advantage and eliminate all the extra costs." Kanellos moderated a panel with Qureshey at last week's Digital Home Developers Conference, where other panelists offered something similar for the home. There was Intellon Corp., which pushes an ultra wideband (UWB) and wireless chip to stream videos through the home using power lines as the network. And Tzero Technologies, which uses UWB to push high-definition video wirelessly. Kanellos said he hasn't made up his mind whether Quartics will be a big winner. Qureshey's venture also faces some big-name competitors. Last month, Apple said it would soon offer a device to watch iTunes videos on a nearby TV. "The industry got very excited about Apple's announcement and their forthcoming TV product for the reason that they knew it would be very Apple -like and it would just work but only if it was iTunes content," said Van Baker, an analyst with market researcher Gartner. The Quartics chip is different. It doesn't care if the video is from iTunes or YouTube, Microsoft video, DivX or MPEG2. It will work with any video format, or codec, that your computer can play. "Average Joe's don't care about what video codec it is. They just want to see it," said Ahmed, Quartics president. "Every day, codecs multiply. We don't want that complexity to be passed on the user." On a recent day in a room at Quartics' Irvine office, Ahmed offered a demonstration. He connected a TV to a small box using an ordinary video cable. The box, a prototype, is a bit larger than a paperback book and has a built-in Quartics video chip and Wi-Fi chip. On his laptop, he played a DVD, a movie from Movielink.com and TV shows from his Slingbox connection. The laptop wirelessly broadcast all the video to the TV without any glitches or interruptions. Any PC user can connect to the Quartics box with Wi-Fi. There is no need for an installation disc or Internet access because the software is stored on the chip. The user downloads the software to a PC and can then point and click to send video to the TV, as if the TV were a second monitor. Right now, the process uses an adapter _ the box _ but Quartics envisions that the chip will someday be built into the TV. Another perk: The installation software can be updated any time there is a new video format. Quartics is further along than most start -ups. It employs dozens of people, mostly engineers, at its Irvine headquarters. It's backed by investors from Enterprise Partners in La Jolla and Foundation Capital in Menlo Park. It has 17 patents and a management team with experience from networking and TV companies like Scientific Atlanta, Mitsubishi and Conexant Systems. And it has products. A wireless Acer projector acts just like a TV so one can send PowerPoint slides to the projector without messing with cables. More products should be available by Christmas. "We're very bullish on this company," said Rich Redelfs, a general partner with Foundation Capital, which won't say how much it invested but it is working on a new round of funding. "It's in a huge potential market, and it has an awesome management team. Safi has built a Fortune 500 company. There's not a lot of those around." Qureshey plans to keep the price of a TV with the chip no more than $100 more than a TV without the chip. To do so, he's targeting original design manufacturers (ODMs) in Asia, such as Compel Electronics in China, which builds PCs for companies like Dell. This way, Compel spreads the word about the Quartics chip, Qureshey said. "The PC business has changed. Acer will do $11 (billion) to $12 billion a year. But Acer, like Dell, has become a brand. They don't develop. Over in China, we work with the ODMs, and they work with six different PC companies," Qureshey said. "We're helping create an ecosystem." Baker, with Gartner, is more interested in the next Quartics chip, which would improve a notebook computer's battery life. The computer would depend on the video chip to play the movie and put the computer's main processor, such as an Intel Pentium, to sleep. "If you use their silicon instead of the CPU to do the decoding, it reduces the battery drain by, what they said, is 300 percent. That's pretty impressive because it's been a bugaboo for a long time if you want to play a movie on your notebook. If they can truly give that battery savings, that's potentially bigger," Baker said. "I have a lot of respect for Safi. If he came out of retirement to do this, my suspicion is he thinks this is pretty significant." ___ (c) 2006, The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.). Visit the Register on the World Wide Web at http://www.ocregister.com/ Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. _____ PHOTOS (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): CPT-VIDEOCHIP For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. Copyright 2006 The Orange County Register |