Xing Technology

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Xing Technology was founded in Arroyo Grande, California in 1989 by former networking executive Howard Gordon on the basis of a simple (i.e. slow) JPEG decoding library that he had developed. This software attracted the attention of Chris Eddy, a Texan who had developed a technique for processing discrete cosine transforms (DCT) very quickly through software. Eddy's technique begat the first Xing MPEG video player, a very simple MS-DOS application that could play back an I-frame-only video MPEG stream encoded at a constant quantization level at 160x120 resolution. Not impressive by today's standards, but quite an accomplishment for the Intel 386 and Intel 486 level computers of the time.

On the basis of this, Xing expanded from Gordon's home to a dedicated house (still in Arroyo Grande). Chris Eddy actually lived in the room where he worked, keeping his minimal stuff in the closet and showering at the gym next door. Xing expanded to seven employees: Laurie Beam, Tom Chen, Ken Mascaro, Rich Fife and Ray Bunnage filling out the staff in addition to Gordon and Eddy. Later on, the company moved to new offices above and to the side of a KMart down the road, gaining room to expand.

Over the next several years, Xing expanded into several directions. They added Windows support to the MS-DOS MPEG player and then created a software MPEG audio decoder (first only MP2 out of patent considerations with MP3), a real time ISA 160x120 MPEG capture board (XingIt!), a JPEG management system (Picture Prowler) and finally moved into networking, creating a handful of different products before settling down on StreamWorks, the first live 24 hour video and the first live 24 hour audio broadcast system for the internet. RealVideo appeared just before StreamWorks, but at the time it could only broadcast pre-encoded clips. It could not transmit live video. Xing experienced a period of expansion into the mid to late 90's through its MP3 software, but encountered some retraction later on, was bought out by RealNetworks in 1999 and was quickly absorbed.

Xing is also famous for being the company whose Software DVD player was hacked which allowed the DVD encryption scheme CSS out of the bag, leading to DeCSS.

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