[Updated Jan. 5, 2005] — Coventive is shipping a mini-ITX SBC (single-board computer) targeting Linux-based DVRs (digital video recorders), wireless TVs, network MPEG encoding boxes, and surveillance systems. The Uranus board is based on a MIP64 Toshiba SoC (system-on-chip), along with a Vweb MPEG coprocessor. A Linux SDK (software development kit) is available for the board.

Coventive's Uranus board appears to closely resemble Toshiba's AVM49R, a mini-ITX board that shipped last October, targeting sub-$100 DVRs and other A/V (audio/video) devices.

Coventive says the Uranus board is one of the most advanced video encoding and sharing hubs available. The mini-ITX form-factor (17 x 17cm) fits in a wide range of third-party mini-ITX cases, it says, while a wealth of A/V I/O ports allow flexible network and system connections.

The Uranus fits standard mini-ITX cases, either with or without a hard drive
(Click either image to enlarge)
The board is based on a Toshiba TMPR4938, an SoC with a 64-bit MIPS III core with 32KB each of instruction and data caches, an MMU (memory management unit), and a single- and double-precision FPU.

In addition to a MIPS64-based Toshiba SoC, the Uranus board includes a Vweb 2010 MPEG encoder chip, which Vweb described in November of 2002 as the “world's first MPEG-1, 2 and 4 audio/video/system CODEC chip.”

Coventive Uranus system diagram
(Click to enlarge)

The Uranus includes a wealth of back-panel A/V I/O ports
(Click to enlarge)
On-board I/O ports include:

• Tuner/AV in
• Composite / Y Cr Cb
• Composite / SPDIF
• LAN
• Two USB ports
• Two IDE ports
• Ethernet LAN port
• PCI
• CCIR656 in/out (infrared)
• ATX power connector

Coventive supplies the Uranus board with a Linux software environment and SDK (software development kit) that it says makes use of the most up-to-date version of Linux. The company lists software features as follows:

• Simultaneous MPEG4 encoding and decoding
• Time-shifting of streaming video
• Scheduled recording
• Remote LAN-based access and control
• Truecolor OSD (on-screen display)

Availability

The Uranus board is available as part of the PVR VR8600 set-top box reference design, samples of which are priced at $500. Lead time is four weeks for quantities greater than 20, and five days for smaller orders.

With the Linux-based SDK, the Uranus board is priced at $16,000, including source code and support.

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