Nogatech NT100x

Nogatech produced several USB bridge chipsets, intended for video capture devices, which, collectively, were marketed as being the "USBVision" family of products. (Note: in actuality, Nogatech was very inconsistent in respect to their usage of either a "V" or "v" in their references to the product's name, so "USBvision" was also commonly presented).

The NT1003 was the first chip in this family. When literature on the product emerged in 1997, the NT1003 was originally referred to as the Live Video On USB chip. However, that label soon disappeared from company use and the chip was rebranded as the USB-Vision. By the eventual time of product availability, in late 1998, it had subsequently become known more simply as the USBVision (or USBvision). The NT1003 was intended for use in digital video cameras; where in such use, the chip's algorithms provide compression of the raw 30fps video data down to data rates between the ranges of 0.5 Mbit to 8 Mbit, and thus permit the transmission of a video stream across the narrow bandwidth of an USB 1.1 channel.

The NT1004 became available a year later, in late 1999. This successor product was labeled by Nogatech as the USBvision II (or USBVision II) chipset. The NT1004 most notably added the capability to simultaneously stream video, audio and serial data (IR remote control data, smart media card and other standard serial data) across a USB interface to a computer, and hence broadened the range of devices for which the USBVision was suitable. In addition, the NT1004 IC was a physically smaller package and brought improved power characteristics over its predecessor.

In 2000, Nogatech was purchased by Zoran, and, seemingly, under control of the new owners, a coherent product name branding was settled upon, with "USBvision" emerging as the formal name for the entire chipset family. Zoran, using its own product part nomenclature, also recast the NT1004 chip as the ZR36504.

The Nogatech developed NT1005 chipset was released by Zoran as product part ZR36505 and held the marketing name of "USBvision II Data Decoder". The NT1005 was essentially a complimentary chip to the NT1004; it offered all the same features as the NT1004, but also provided support for VBI processing, and hence Teletext/Closed Captioning.

The NT1003, NT1004, and NT1005 chipsest are all supported under Linux by the USBVision device driver. The chips were widely used by a number of different vendors in their USB video capture devices; for examples, see USBVision devices.

Zoran later added to the USBvision family with the "USBvision III" (ZR36506) chipset.

External Links

• Zoran Product Page (via the Wayback Machine)