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Brooktree
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<p>Brooktree Corporation was an American company founded in 1983 by <a href="/facts/Henry_Katzenstein/hJguRPLm">Henry Katzenstein</a> to commercialize a faster hardware architecture for <a href="/facts/Digital-to-analog_converter/5loEvAeb">digital to analog</a> converters, three to eight times faster than the converters then on the market. Their products used a unique current-driven design that allowed them to switch at much faster rates than voltage-based switching. Their videoDAC products were the first capable of driving <a href="/facts/2K_resolution/cAMLKENR">2K resolution</a> monitors, which made them near-universal on <a href="/facts/Workstation/h5tK4hTt">workstation</a> systems in the early 1990s. The integration of similar systems on existing drivers and the move to all-digital monitor standards eliminated the need for this class of chips. </p><p>Brooktree turned from the DAC market to <a href="/facts/Video_capture/D4HgJ7As">video capture</a>, introducing the Bt848 in the early 1990s. Fed the signal from a <a href="/facts/Radio_frequency/aWku7h4R">radio frequency</a> receiver, the Bt848 produced a digital output that could then be compressed and stored. These were widely used in <a href="/facts/TV_tuner_card/xDY4otBq">TV tuner cards</a> from companies like <a href="/facts/Hauppauge_Computer_Works/bQzMvC7R">Hauppauge Computer Works</a> in the mid-1990s. An updated version, the Bt878, added audio digitization too, reducing the chip count of the overall decoder system. The company was bought out by <a href="/facts/Rockwell_Semiconductor/nKcIUc8E">Rockwell Semiconductor</a> in 1996, which became <a href="/facts/Conexant/nKcIUc8E">Conexant</a> (<a href="/facts/Nasdaq/C6GlcQcB">Nasdaq</a>: <a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/cnxt">CNXT</a>) in 1998. The last chip in the Brooktree line was the Fusion 878, which added <a href="/facts/MPEG-2/SpuH5FJu">MPEG-2</a> support and the ability to decode <a href="/facts/ATSC_standards/RIYWmB7v">ATSC digital video</a>. </p>