Sigma Designs - Graphics Nostalgia

Blast from the past. Sigma Designs - the first company to come out with MPEG1 boards back in the early 1990s. They were, for a while there, a graphics company when the world was overdosing on Windows acceleration (Windows 3.1 that is), and MPEG seemed like the next technology leap for the industry. So, when I caught sight of their booth it brought it all back - the RealMagic board, the negotiations with Sigma on pricing for OEM distribution, the pain, the horror, and finally, the end as Intel decided to do everything it could to use up processor cycles. After that, we entered that brief period in the mid-90s when everyone and his dog was at Fry's stores scooping up either a Creative CD-ROM upgrade kit, or, now this is one for the ages, a Media Vision CD-ROM upgrade kit.

Sigma Designs - a blast from the past

Apparently, these days Sigma has been profiting from PC DVD. 42% of its revenues comes from chipsets, 22% from PC DVD, 25% from streaming video, and the rest from other sources. It's actually nice to see that this is one old time graphics company that hasn't completely disappeared, or been lost in the world of corporate mergers. Maybe it's a sign.

You know, these guys once had a really good shot at owning the digital video business on PCs. I mean, they were ahead of the game with RealMagic. They could have had it all, but I say that about so many graphics companies. But, it's true. It's always one little slip here, or one little burst of CPU power there, and dreams are turned into dust. Hmmm.