Zii Powered Phone, Netbook, Tablet PC To Headline Zii Summit

As the blitzkrieg of Zii news continues, this perhaps is the biggest news of all. Yeah, I said that yesterday, but this update from ZiiLABS further clarifies what will be showcased at the Zii Summit in a few weeks. And these are the big dogs- a tablet pc, netbook, and what I think is the biggest of all, a mobile phone. Now, these are said to be ‘OEM-ready’, so it seems that no manufacturers will be showcasing their finished versions of said products. However, it does bode well that there are so many applications already implemented. The page also lists a web-box, a security camera system (presumably a version of partner Grandeye’s), speakers, a piano keyboard, and a precursor to the MediaBook.

Additionally, there will be a demonstration of the new ZiiMeet software which appears to be HD-optimized software for meetings. We’ll see all these and more on December 1st. For both Creative fans and stockholders alike, it can’t come soon enough.

Zii Summit Page on Zii.com

Creative and ZiiLABS Showcase the Perfect
Developer’s Solution at China Event

The Complete Suite of Zii StemCell Computing Powered
Developer’s Solutions and Services Will Give Partners Tools
to Turn Ideas Quickly into World Class Products
for a Sustainable Planet

þ Our Value: A Ready Solution

Beginning with chip, board and platforms (both Zii Plaszma and Android Operating Systems are supported), to products and services, the Zii Plaszma Platform frees innovators from the tedious, costly complexity of hardware and software development to create energy efficient, high performance 3D and HD products quickly and cost effectively.

þ Our Hardware Ecosystem: OEM & ODM Ready

A range of OEM-ready Zii Powered devices will be showcased – powered by ZiiLABS ZMS-05 and ZMS-08 media-rich application processors. Each chip meets a unique market need. The ZMS-05 is an energy efficient chip for the mass market, while the ZMS-08 is designed for media-rich power hungry handheld devices. The line-up of devices on display includes a Mobile Phone platform, a Touch Tablet PC, a Netbook, a Web-Box, a 360^o Multi-View Camera System, ultra high-performance Speakers, a Piano Keyboard for the PC, and a Portable e-Book Reader.

þ Our Service Ecosystem: Entertainment, Education, Communication Enabled

A sneak preview of the full suite of Zii Services will be unveiled – showcasing advanced content capabilities. Zii Services is the ideal solution for content and OEM partners, giving them the potential to create future entertainment and education solutions. The highlight of the Zii Services suite is ZiiMeet, the Next Generation Video Conferencing System. ZiiMeet is a scalable Multi-Purpose, Multi-View, Multi-User, Multi-Platform, Multi-Medium, Multi-Party collaborative system. This flexible system gives partners a huge potential for business opportunities!

þ Our Partnership Strategy: A Win-Win Synergy

We are committed to the success of our partners and have invested over US$1 billion to build the most flexible, scalable and power efficient range of developer’s building blocks to enable them to create world class products. Partners can take advantage of the Zii Plaszma Platform and its various modules backed by state-of-the-art technologies, brand equities and award-winning product industrial designs to bring a range of high quality and low cost products rapidly to market.

þ Our Vision: A Global Community. A Sustainable Planet.

We believe that through the StemCell Computing Revolution, there is a great potential to create an extravagant networked world that will transform the way we live – a world where High Definition Video Conferencing on demand, and computers that run on a single watt, will be the norm. It will lead to future generations becoming a truly global community, truly living on a sustainable planet.

Event Highlights

Main Event

You will learn how to:

• OUTSMART and beat the system. The Product Development cycle – or the ’system’ – is a costly, lengthy and tedious process, but with the Zii Plaszma Platform, you can skip past all that!
• LEVERAGE on the Zii Plaszma Platform and its various modules backed by state-of-the-art technologies, brand equities and award-winning product industrial designs to bring a range of high quality and low cost products rapidly to market.
• MARKET your products effectively. Partners will be introduced to Zii technology, platforms, products, services, content, and the entire Zii ecosystem, as well as a comprehensive e-commerce, branding and marketing system – a system designed to give innovators the means to radically increase the effectiveness of their market reach to their customers.

You will get a chance to:

SYNERGIZE with business and content partners who have similar goals and interests as you and discover how you can complement each other’s strengths by forging strategic alliances.

Products & Services Showcase

Zii Services

Zii Services is the ideal solution for content and OEM partners, giving them the potential to create future entertainment and education solutions. For content partners, Zii Services gives you the platform on which to place your content. For OEM partners, Zii Services offer you content that transforms your product into a compelling value proposition. The highlight of the Zii Services suite is ZiiMeet, the Next Generation Video Conferencing System. ZiiMeet is a scalable Multi-Purpose, Multi-View, Multi-User, Multi-Platform, Multi-Medium, Multi-Party collaborative system. This flexible system gives partners a huge potential for business opportunities!

Zii Powered Devices

A range of OEM-ready Zii Powered devices will be showcased – powered by ZiiLABS ZMS-05 and ZMS-08 media-rich application processors. The line-up of devices on display include: a Touch Tablet PC, a Netbook, a Web-Box, a 360^o Multi-View Camera System, ultra high-performance Speakers, a Piano Keyboard for the PC, and a Portable e-Book Reader. But the highlight of our devices line-up is our Mobile Phone platform. ZiiLABS ushers in a new era of explosive high definition 3D with the Zii Optimized Android Phone platform. The Zii Optimized Android Phone platform gives developers the chance to use the familiar Android OS, but with a difference. Harnessing StemCell Computing Technology found on the ZMS-05 Media Rich Processor, Android is now super-charged with seamless 3D graphics and High Definition video playback performance.

• Phone with Fully featured Android Platform
• OpenGL ES 3D graphics
• 1080p HD video output
• Accelerated video, graphic and imaging
• Full integration with SurfaceFlinger
• High Quality Audio
• Enhanced User Interfaces
• Image Processing
• Accelerated Web Browsing

ZMS-08 Media Rich Applications Processor Chip

ZiiLABS Introduces ZMS-08 – the World’s First 1080p Blu-ray Quality Handheld Media Processor.

• New ZMS-08 StemCell Processor Offers Faster, Lower Power Single Chip Solution
• Full H.264 HD 1080p Video Playback
• 720p Video Conferencing
• OpenGL ES 2.0 for X-Fi Audio and 1GHz ARM Cortex Application Acceleration

ZiiLABS Introduces the ZMS-08: The World’s First 1080p Capable Handheld Processor

ZiiLABS sure hasn’t been sitting on their butts since the first release of the ZMS-05. They’ve upped the ante a bit on the Tegra with the introduction of the ZMS-08, the full 1080p capable chip for handhelds. Among other notables, the new ARM-8 Cortex processor perhaps the biggest upgrade. It’s the same processor core as in the Droid and iPhone 3GS, but ZiiLABS has added other components to the rest of the architecture to make it extremely powerful. The new clock speed is 1GHz, which puts it well ahead of the OMAP3 3430 processors in the Droid and Palm Pre (600Mhz). Will we see full 1080p output and blazing fast speeds on the consumer Zii? Only time will tell, but things look very promising.

New ZMS-08 StemCell Processor Offers Faster, Lower-Power Single Chip Solution for Full H.264 HD 1080p Video Playback, 720p Video Conferencing, 1080p Encode, OpenGL ES 2.0, X-Fi Audio and 1GHz ARM® Cortex Application Acceleration

Singapore – 9th November 2009 : ZiiLABS, a pioneering media processor and platforms company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd. today announced, the ZMS-08, its 3rd generation media-rich applications processor that brings 1080p Blu-ray quality H.264 decode to low-power devices. Delivering more than four times the performance of previous generation devices, the ZMS-08 combines the flexible multi-format media processing capabilities of ZiiLABS’ StemCell Computing array with an 1GHz ARM® Cortex™ processor to deliver the low-power, high performance media-rich processing required of next-generation connected devices such as web tablets, netbooks, connected TVs, video conferencing systems and home media hubs.

The ZMS-08 is sampling now to certain customers and is supported by ZiiLABS’ optimized Linux®-based Android™ and native Plaszma operating systems and development platforms.

The ZMS-08’s proven StemCell Computing array provides the media processing capabilities to deliver full HD 1080p high-profile H.264 video decode, simultaneous H.264 encode and decode at 720p, 1080p 24fps encode, accelerated OpenGL® ES 2.0 3D graphics at up to 1 Gpixels/sec, 2D processing, compositing, image processing and advanced Xtreme Fidelity™ X-Fi Audio effects. With the low-power ARM Cortex processor running at up to 1GHz, the ZMS-08 is aimed at small form factor devices that enable content currently accessed via the PC to spread to mobile and low-energy devices.

“Combining advanced ARM technology with their own media processing IP has enabled ZiiLABS to deliver the high performance and low-power consumption required to enable the next leap in the mobile internet revolution” said Ian Drew, EVP marketing, ARM.

“The ZMS-08 processor confirms the flexibility and scalability of our architecture and enables our customers to develop richer mobile and connected devices that are four times faster and twice as power efficient as previous solutions,” said Hock Leow, President of ZiiLABS. “Its new capabilities such as Blu-ray quality playback, 720p simultaneous encode and decode of H.264 video, accelerated OpenGL ES 2.0 and rich peripheral integration such as dual USB controllers and HDMI are blurring the boundary between the capabilities of the traditional PC and connected device.”

The inclusion of Xtreme Fidelity X-Fi audio technology delivers a great sounding audio experience. Crystalizer intelligently restores audio detail lost during file compression and CMSS-3D adds the surround sound experience to headphones and stereo speakers and up-mixes stereo to sound great on surround sound speaker systems. The Smart Volume, Dialogue Enhancer, Acoustic Echo cancellation, Graphic Equalizer, Microphone beam former and Noise Reduction modules offer customers a complete portfolio of advanced audio processing that make their products sound better.

High Quality HD Video Encode and Decode

Full HD video playback at 1080p supporting H.264 High Profile at up to 40Mbps means users can experience Blu-ray quality video playback direct to their 1080p TV utilizing the integrated HDMI controller. Crystal clear 720p H.264 video encode and decode at 30 fps enables users to keep in touch with their friends and colleagues via videoconferencing.

Accelerated 3D Graphics

Support for OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics and 1 Gpixels/sec fill rate enable a new class of user experiences including enhanced user interfaces, PC-like 3D gaming and Adobe Flash 10.

Enhanced Audio and Voice

The inclusion of Xtreme Fidelity X-Fi audio technology delivers a great sounding audio experience. Crystalizer intelligently restores audio detail lost during file compression and CMSS-3D adds the surround sound experience to headphones and stereo speakers and up-mixes stereo to sound great on surround sound speaker systems. The Smart Volume, Dialogue Enhancer, Acoustic Echo Cancellation, graphic equalizer, microphone beam former and noise reduction modules offer customers a complete portfolio of advanced audio processing that make their products sound better.

ZMS-08 Features

The ZMS-08 flexible StemCell Computing array features 64 fully programmable floating point processing elements that off-load the media processing from the ARM CPU to deliver superior media capabilities coupled with improved application performance. The flexible array architecture enables users to experience the widest range of community generated and commercial content including H.264, Microsoft® WMV9, MPEG2, MPEG4, OpenGL ES and Adobe Flash.

The tightly coupled 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 provides a secure, high performance main CPU that features a 256K L2 cache, NEON™, TrustZone® security technology and 1 GByte addressable RAM.

A wide range of integrated peripheral functions help to reduce system costs, complexity and device footprint. Dual USB 2.0 OTG controllers with PHY and ULPI interfaces provide direct connection to USB hosts, peripherals and high-speed modems. Four HD video processing units support camera and display input and output processing with the integrated HDMI and Analog video encoders supporting HD-TV 1080p output at 60fps. The secure Boot ROM, three SDIO/MMC ports, UARTs, SPI, GPIO and advanced 64-bit and 32-bit memory controller supporting mDDR and DDR2 at up to 333MHz provide the interfaces and memory bandwidth required for today’s media rich connected devices.

Availability

The ZMS-08 is sampling to certain customers now and is scheduled for volume shipment in the 1st quarter of 2010. The chip is housed in a 13×13mm, 424-pin FBGA package.

Read all the specs at ZiiLABS.com.

Android and Plaszma 0.94.03 Now Available

Pick it up over in your download box at Zii.com and let us know how it works out for you. It’s version 1.6 (Donut), and not 2.0.

Currently not working on Android:

• Camera
• GPS
• Bluetooth

See the hands on from Enzo at AnythingButiPod:

GenMP3: Android Coming This Week

Generation MP3, a very popular French-language MP3 player website has sources that say that Android is coming sometime in the next fourteen days- good news for all if the source is true! The translation is provided by Google Translate, so it’s pretty sucky, but you can get the gist of it.

Zii The Egg is an egg that hatches close. Nothing to see the cur GMP3, we see how the team relays to monitor the baby and even today new exclusive: Android should be available for download from next week (S43 if the account is good)!

GenerationMP3 Link [French]

Zii EGG firmware 0.92.02 released, Site Wiki up

Here’s the newest firmware update from ZiiLABS! Here are the fixes, but if you do update, plan on resyncing all media files, as they will be lost!

• SD Card Integration
• Camera Application
• Clothes Line Visual For Landscape Browsing Mode
• Smoother Text Scrolling On Now Playing Screen

Also, we’ve added the wiki several users have requested- either click the link above or go directly there at ziiegg.com/wiki. Have fun with the wiki, as details and rules will be posted shortly.

ZiiLABS Press Release ZiiLABS Announces Graphics and HD Video Acceleration for Adobe Flash Player, AIR Support

More good news on the Zii front. HD Video acceleration and full Flash support have officially been announced by ZiiLABS. On a more surprising front, AIR support will be coming to the Zii EGG platform.

ZiiLABS

Amsterdam – 11 September 2009 - ZiiLABS, a pioneering media processor and platforms company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd. announced that it is collaborating with Adobe as part of the Open Screen Project to optimize and enable Adobe® Flash® Player, a key component of the Adobe Flash Platform to enhance the Web experience across a wide range of mobile and digital home devices.

The ZiiLABS accelerated implementations of Adobe Flash Player enable users to experience uncompromised Web browsing, full H.264 HD video playback and rich Flash technology based content on any platform based on its ZMS media-rich applications processors and recently announced handheld Zii EGG StemCell Computer.

“Users want the same rich Web experience on all their devices, be it their internet tablet, mobile device or high-definition TV and like Adobe, we are dedicated to deliver the best visual experience on all these platforms,” said Tim Lewis, Director of Marketing and Partner Relations, ZiiLABS. “Our long heritage implementing OpenGL, 3D graphics and multi-format video acceleration put us in a great position to work with Adobe to provide a no-compromise implementation of Adobe Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR™ on ZMS processors.”

The Open Screen Project is a broad initiative of industry leaders working to deliver a consistent runtime environment across devices. Led by Adobe, the Open Screen Project is dedicated to enable Web content and standalone applications across PCs, netbooks, mobile devices, televisions and other consumer electronics that take advantage of Adobe Flash Platform capabilities. For more information, please visit www.openscreenproject.org.

“We are excited to welcome ZiiLABS as a new participant to the Open Screen Project,” said Anthony Haag, Director of Business Development, Open Screen Project, Adobe. “As a provider of innovative application processors, hardware platforms and middleware, ZiiLABS’ support for Flash Player 10 and AIR will help deliver much richer and more immersive user experiences across a broad range of new devices and consumer electronics.”

About Flash Platform

The Adobe Flash Platform is a complete system of integrated tools, frameworks, clients and servers for the development of Web applications, content and video that runs consistently across operating systems and devices. Adobe Flash Player content reaches over 98 percent of Internet-enabled desktops, and Adobe Flash technology is the number one platform for video on the Web. In addition, the mobile runtime has shipped and delivered Flash based content on close to 40 percent of all new mobile phones and devices in 2008. For more information about the Adobe Flash Platform visit www.adobe.com/flashplatform.

About ZiiLABS

ZiiLABS is a worldwide leader in low-power, media-rich application processors, hardware platforms and advanced middleware that enable OEMs, ODMs, System Integrators and Software Developers to deliver best-in-class products across a broad range of consumer electronics and embedded markets. Originally founded in 1994 as 3DLABS, the company re-branded and joined with the Personal Digital Entertainment group of Creative Technology to form ZiiLABS in January 2009. ZiiLABS now has over 800 R&D engineers working on ZiiLABS related projects and has invested US$1 billion and 10,000 man years in media processing solutions. The company has offices in the UK, China, USA and Singapore.

We Have Our First Review

Member Prototype0 in our forums has received his EGG- below are his impressions.
I preordered and received my Zii Egg 2 days ago.  My first impression is not favorable but being a developer edition (ie beta hardware) it could be worse.  It came in very professional black and white packaging that was well organized and easy to unpackage.

First thing I noticed when powering the Egg on for the first time is that there appear to be a couple of dead pixels or screen defects (very small).  Pretty common on these types of devices (I also have a PSP that has a dead pixel) so no gripe there.  My real concern started when I did the “slide to unlock”.  The responsiveness is not quite what I expected.  In fact, I could do the “slide to unlock” next to the area where you are supposed to (next to the Z) and it slides.  So either its designed that way or the accuracy of the screen needs tweaking.

I should mention that I also have an iPod Touch 2g so I am making a comparison to the responsiveness of that device.  It is probably unfair to make such a comparison given the young age of tyhe Zii and Plaszma OS.

The next thing I tried was connecting it to my wireless LAN.  There currently is no way to configure a custom SSID / Security.  You can only connect to SSIDs that are broadcast and available in the list (unless I am missing something?).  Once connected, I launched Opera which took a couple of seconds to load (more responsiveness issues).  Again, making the comparison to the iPod Touch 2g the browser is noticeable slower.  It also lacks the 2 finger zoom functions of the Safari browser on the Touch.  Instead there is a + and – on the screen that you tap to zoom in and out.

Next I moved on to media.  First came video.  I played the demo videos and they look fantastic on this screen.  Much more impressive than the Touch.  The real pain came when I tried to copy a file to the Egg.  a 6GB MKV file took about 2.5 hours to copy over.  Something isnt quite right there.  When the file was finally copied over, I found that it was unplayable on the Egg (codecs coming in Sept).  So I then copied over a couple of files that I had formatted for the Touch.  Again, the copy process took longer than expected but not as painful because these files were about 200mb each.  The videos played with no problem and looked crisp and smooth.

Next was music.  I copied over some MP3s (again the copy process took longer than expected).  I launched the Music player (took about 4 secs to start) and all my songs were there with album art and all.  The sound quality is fanctastic.  I dont know if it’s the headphones on the x-fi processor but sound on this thing is noticeably better than on the Touch.

I was disappointed to find that a lot of features are missing right now (coming Q4) like the camera.  But I am sure firmware updates are on their way.

I guess this is what is to be expected of the device- it’s a beta product (not in the Google sense, but a real beta sense) that is a good foundation. But what Creative does here can be something really cool or half bake it and catastrophically fail on the software side. I hope it’s the former. Have you received yours? Is your experience similar?

Zii EGG Now Shipping!

Did you get your Zii EGG yet? The latest and greatest from Creative has begun shipping and several people have already gotten it. What are your first impressions? If you have any pictures or videos, please submit them in the forum!

Exclusive Interview With Andrew Audsley of ZiiLABS

A few weeks ago, I sent a few interview questions to Andrew Audsley of ZiiLABS. Not having heard anything from him in thirteen days, I assumed it was a case of overworked PR not having the resources nor desire to respond to a small niche website. Boy, was I wrong! The day that the Zii EGG and Plaszma were launched by the company, I received an email with a full response. Lucky for me, as all of the questions I posed were probably going to be non-answers until the official release date. Most interesting to me was the response to the number of companies working with the ZMS-05, and a suggestion that a ZMS-05 product is coming soon from one of ZiiLABS’ partners. Click through to read the interview!

(more…)

CNET Asia and Hardware Zone Get Playtime With the Zii EGG

CNET Asia and Hardware Zone got an invitation from Creative to come play around with the Zii EGG. CNET brought along a video camera and demonstrated a very small bit of the OS in addition to a full overview of the physical features. While overviews of products on the outside are always welcome, it’s likely going to be the internal operating system that sells the device. The short sequences of Plaszma that they showed looked gorgeous, but not really enough to formulate an opinion.

CNET Asia- Hands-on with the Creative Zii Egg

HardwareZone- Preview- Creative Zii Egg

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