Pioneer Blu-ray Player to Feature Sigma Designs

MILPITAS, Calif - Dec. 12, 2005 - Sigma Designs today announced it will work with Pioneer Corporation on the joint development of a full-featured Blu-ray DVD player using Sigma Designs' SMP8630 family of media processors.

"Pioneer intends to be the first company to offer a high-quality, Blu-ray DVD player that contains all the key features expected from a consumer product under our brand name," said Russ Johnston, senior vice president of marketing and product planning for the home entertainment division of Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. "Sigma's SMP8630 family of chipsets provides a virtual system-on-chip solution for the hardware portion, enabling us to focus on software development and value-added features that extend beyond basic operation."

Blu-ray is the leading standard in the market for next-generation, high-definition optical players, based on blue laser disc technology. Blu-ray allows consumers to view movies and other programs in high definition. In addition, Blu-ray Discs allow consumers to record HD programming from a cable, satellite or TV antenna. A Blu-ray Disc computer drive enables consumers to store up to 50 gigabytes at a time to back up data, photos, portable music files and home videos.

"Collaborating with Pioneer on an industry-first product was a natural relationship for Sigma," said Ken Lowe, vice president of strategic marketing, Sigma Designs. "Sigma is dedicated to creating the leading chipset for next-generation, high-definition optical players and we are excited to be working with such a respected consumer electronics company."

Availability
Pioneer plans to introduce the new Blu-ray DVD player in the first half of 2006.

About Sigma's SMP8634 Media Processor
Sigma's SMP8634 media processor integrates a complete complement of next-generation capabilities for a single-chip system-on-chip (SOC) solution with powerful multimedia processing, robust content security system, and a full complement of peripherals. Its advanced decoder engines support video decoding of H.264 (MPEG-4 part 10), Windows Media(R) Video 9 (Microsoft's implementation of VC-1, the proposed SMPTE standard), MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 (part 2) with multiple streams, up to the equivalent of two high-definition video streams. High-performance graphics acceleration, multistandard audio decoding, advanced display processing capabilities, and HDMI/HDCP output round out its multimedia core. Powerful content security is ensured through a dedicated secure processor, flash memory, and a range of digital rights management (DRM) engines for high-speed payload decryption. The SMP8634's 300-MIPS host CPU, 3.2 GB/second unified memory controller, Ethernet 10/100 controller, dual USB 2.0 controller, and IDE controller provide for a single-chip solution for most set-top boxes and consumer players.

About Blu-ray
Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. A single-layer Blu-ray Disc can hold up to 25GB, which can be used to record over 2 hours of HDTV or more than 13 hours of standard-definition TV. There are also dual-layer versions of the discs that can hold up to 50GB.

About Pioneer
Pioneer Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the leading manufacturers of consumer and business-use electronics products such as audio, video and car electronics on a global scale. Its shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol PIO), Euronext Amsterdam, Tokyo Stock Exchange, and Osaka Securities Exchange.

About Sigma Designs, Inc.
Sigma Designs (Nasdaq:SIGM) specializes in silicon-based MPEG decoding for streaming video, progressive DVD playback, and advanced digital set-top boxes. The company's award-winning REALmagic(R) Video Streaming Technology is used in both commercial and consumer applications providing highly integrated solutions for high-quality decoding of MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. Headquartered in Milpitas, Calif., the company also has sales offices in China, Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. For more information, please visit the company's web site at www.sigmadesigns.com/ .