Designed for the living room, the Digital Media Center from 4MBO delivers the all-in-one digital entertainment experience through the enhanced performance and fanless operation of the VIA Eden ESP7000 processor

Berlin, Germany, 1 September 2003 - VIA Technologies, Inc., a leading innovator and developer of silicon chip technologies and PC platform solutions, and 4MBO, a leading German systems developer, today announced the availability of the new Digital Media Center (DMC) based on the recently launched VIA Eden™ ESP7000 processor, and demonstrations of the system at the VIA booth 230 in Hall 1.2 at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) show taking place in Berlin from August 29th to September 3rd.

Designed as the successor to the VCR, the DMC from 4MBO features an attractive, silent chassis design and full remote operation from a standard remote control and palm-size keyboard. The DMC enables digital TV, Free and Pay TV, digital photo viewing, Video on Demand, Music on Demand, Games on Demand, e-mail, Internet browsing, DVD and MP3 playback and time shift TV viewing, as well as an interface to the “Premiere” pay-per-view program.

“We chose to launch sales of the DMC at IFA 2003 because of the consumer electronics focus of the show and the excellent timing in preparation for the winter and Christmas buying seasons that are always premium times for home entertainment purchases,” said Christof Winker, Head of Desktop PC/IC Product Management at 4MBO International Electronic AG. “With the ultra low power VIA Eden ESP7000 processor, the DMC has a competitive edge in this market thanks to the increased performance while still being able to operate very quietly in our eye-catching low profile case.”

“The performance and compatibility advantages of native x86 processors is driving their demand in consumer electronics design, and the VIA Eden ESP7000 is the perfect product for developers in this space, enabling smaller, quieter and more powerful fanless entertainment systems than ever before,” said Richard Brown, Associate Vice President of Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. “The DMC from 4MBO demonstrates excellence in system design innovation in this market, raising the performance bar for multi-functional and connected silent entertainment devices, and its wireless LAN capability is well-timed to take advantage of the increasing number of home wireless networks.”

About the 4MBO Digital Media Center

The DMC incorporates the fanless VIA Eden ESP7000 processor and the VIA CLE266 chipset with integrated MPEG-2 decoder, as well as other video encoding/decoding hardware to ensure the smoothest recording and playback of streaming video and TV programs. Its quiet operation is particularly important in devices targeted at the consumer electronics space, where high-quality sound reproduction is demanded without unwanted noise from system cooling fans.

The first of its kind to become available in the sales channel, the interactive DMC incorporates a rich feature set including digital SAT receiver (DVB-S), Dolby Digital, Smart-Card reader, digital radio and cable-free access to the Internet via an integrated wireless LAN with a data transmission rate of 54 Mbps.

About the VIA Eden ESP7000 Processor

The VIA Eden ESP7000 processor is based on the unique VIA CoolStream™ architecture of the ‘Nehemiah’ processor core that minimizes power consumption while optimizing performance, making it an ideal solution for the new generation of innovative fanless designs. Housed in VIA’s low profile EBGA package that reduces thermal density, the VIA Eden ESP7000 consumes a mere 6 watts of Maximum Thermal Design Power and nearly 1 watt of typical power when running at the design clock speed of 733MHz. Measuring only 1.5mm high, it is ideal for highly compact systems that require native x86 performance, compatibility and reliability.

The VIA Eden ESP7000 processor comes packed with advanced performance features such as StepAhead™ Advanced Branch Prediction, sixteen pipeline stages, support for SSE multimedia instructions, a full-speed Floating Point Unit (FPU) and an efficiency-enhanced 64KB Full-Speed Exclusive L2 cache with 16-way associativity for memory optimization. For enhanced digital media applications such as high quality DVD and audio playback, the VIA Eden ESP7000 can be coupled with the highly acclaimed VIA CLE266 chipset, featuring an integrated hardware MPEG-2 decoder, DDR266 SDRAM support, VIA Vinyl™ Audio integrated 5.1 surround sound, high-speed USB2.0 ports, and 10/100 Fast Ethernet.