Pioneer and Sigma Designs to Work on Full-Featured Blu-ray Player

Sigma Designs today announced it will work with Pioneer Corporation on the joint development of a full-featured Blu-ray DVD player using Sigma Designs' SMP8630 family of media processors. "Pioneer intends to be the first company to offer a high-quality, Blu-ray DVD player that contains all the key features expected from a consumer product under our brand name," said Russ Johnston, senior vice president of marketing and product planning for the home entertainment division of Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. "Sigma's SMP8630 family of chipsets provides a virtual system-on-chip solution for the hardware portion, enabling us to focus on software development and value-added features that extend beyond basic operation." Pioneer plans to introduce the new Blu-ray DVD player in the first half of 2006.