[Taipei, Taiwan, May 15, 2003] After two years of unrealized growth in the information appliance (IA) market, the personal video recorder (PVR) is approaching a major breakthrough. Since the second-half of last year, many Japanese major consumer electronics brands have been aggressively launching full lines of PVRs. Demand growth, however, has been limited because the high pricing of the devices puts them out of reach of the average consumers. This is now set to change. With between 50 million and 60 million DVD players sold each year and the average consumers’ daily experiences with traditional VHS video recording, the market is ready for the PVR to be the first IA adopted in volume in living rooms around the world.

To the average consumers, a PVR offers the same functions as a standard VHS video cassette recorder (VCS), with three major differences: video is stored on a CD, DVD, or Hard Disc, that video is as sharp and clean as the original, and viewers can instantly access any part of the video – no more book-sized tapes, fading images and muffled sound, tape tracking problems or fast-forwarding and rewinding to get to the right place. All these attractive features are currently doing little to persuade consumers in the current economic climate because pricing of the leading models from the Japanese brands still ranges between US$500 and US$1,000, compared to the prices of between US$60 and US$200 for VHS VCRs from the same brands. With Taiwanese vendors expected to launch competitively priced products in the second-half of this year, SiS agrees with many analysts who are forecasting that PVR shipments have a very good chance to exceed three million units this year.

Michael Chen, SiS president and CEO, said, “Taiwan has already accumulated over 20 years of IT product development experience and is able to compete effectively internationally in terms of both product design and manufacturing technology.” After more than three years researching and developing chips for IA applications, SiS now believes that Taiwan vendors have an excellent opportunity to build on their success with VCD and DVD players and take a significant share of the world’s developing PVR market.

According to Michael Chen, the development of embedded solutions for IA products has already moved away from Taiwan’s traditional development and manufacturing model, in which work is divided vertically. Upstream suppliers need to provide a value-added, mature platform. The system manufacturers need to carefully select components and tightly integrate the hardware and firmware to produce reliable, easy-to-use and attractive solutions. Finally the products need to be branded, packaged and shipped. They need to work together because they can’t afford to produce a patchy job – consumers won’t tolerate an IA that crashes.

SiS developed the SiS550, the flagship product in its IA chip line, in conjunction with a range of partners from the industry. In order to ensure a success in the PVR market, SiS began working closely with these partners last year on PVR product development. As early as two years ago, many of them began working with the SiS550 chip and their knowledge of the advantages and special features of the chip has enabled the rapid development of competitive PVR products. Michael Chen said, “The SiS550 is a highly integrated solution that is aptly suited for a PVR platform. Apart from its high performance and competitive cost, the SiS550 is currently the only SOC (system on a chip) solution incorporating a Pentium-level CPU. Using an x86-based CPU has the additional advantage of providing Taiwan vendors with an architecture that they are intimately familiar with and able to instantly develop.”

To help customers develop PVR technology and commercialize and launch actual products, SiS’s Information Appliance Product Department (IAPD) established a team dedicated to PVR research and development in February. The performance of this team and the valuable technology they are providing has been recognized by many of SiS’s downstream system manufacturing partners and SiS forecasts that its solutions will be used in over 30% of the PVRs exported by Taiwanese vendors this year. The first PVR products using SiS solutions are expected to hit the market in August.

About Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. (SiS)

Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. (SiS) is a worldwide leader in the development, manufacturing and marketing of leading-edge logic products, including core logic, multimedia, connectivity, and information appliance. The company was founded in 1987 in the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park in Taiwan and has been listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE2363) since August 1997. SiS combines professional chip design with advanced semiconductor manufacturing technologies. For more information, please visit http://www.sis.com.