PNG-supporting Hardware

Hardware with PNG Support

These are devices with some form of PNG support, either natively or via a device-specific software package. There are probably many other such products, but individual web pages and even product names are much more difficult to discover in the case of hardware, and PNG support is rarely (if ever) noted explicitly.

As with the PNG-supporting applications pages, links to home WWW sites are provided where known, but if a link is broken, check the location and see if an updated product is available (and please tell Greg!). Relevant operating systems are printed in (parenthesized italics), though this tends to be a weak concept in the case of hardware. In particular, MHEG-5 is listed for a number of the digital TV devices intended for the UK market; it is basically a next-generation teletext standard that supports bitmapped images and video in addition to text--rather like HTML, only different.

These are listed alphabetically, more or less:

Ceiva [Ceiva Logic] (embedded) - all versions? read-only. (This is an "Internet-connected digital picture frame." The frame itself understands only JPEG format, but the Internet server to which it connects accepts pictures in various formats, including PNG.)
Color Phone C309H [Hitachi] (embedded) - all versions; read-only; 8-bit (palette) support only. (This is a CDMA cell phone with a 120x143, 256-color screen. It uses UP.Browser [browsers page] for its PNG support. See also the press release for further information in English.)
DC 290 [Kodak Digital Science] (embedded) - all versions; read-only. (This is a digital still camera that supports watermarking captured images with a user-defined overlay; a utility creates a special watermark file when given a PNG image. Unfortunately, the camera supports only JPEG and TIFF as output formats.)
Digital Receiver D500 [Sony UK] (MHEG-5) - read-only; tri-level alpha support (0%, 50%, 100%). (This is a set-top box that decodes digital TV broadcasts for display on an existing TV set. PNG is supported as part of the UK profile for MHEG-5.)
Digital Receiver DTR 730-IM [Pace Micro Technology] (MHEG-5) - read-only; tri-level alpha support? (This is a set-top box that decodes digital TV broadcasts for display on an existing TV set. PNG is supported as part of the UK profile for MHEG-5.)
Digital Receiver DTX 6370 [Philips] (MHEG-5) - read-only; tri-level alpha support? (This is a set-top box that decodes digital TV broadcasts for display on an existing TV set. PNG is supported as part of the UK profile for MHEG-5. The link also has information on a pair of integrated digital TVs--i.e., combined decoder and display.)
Dreamcast [Sega] (WWW) - read-only with version 2.0 and later of Planetweb's web browser; full alpha support; no gamma support; progressive display. (This was a game console with Web access. This product has been discontinued.)
DVC 323 [Kodak Digital Science] (embedded) - all versions; write-only. (This is a digital video camera that supports several output formats for stills, including PNG. An older model, the DVC 300, also supported PNG.)
FD Trinitron WEGA [Sony UK] (MHEG-5) - models KV-32DS60(S) and KV-28DS60(S); read-only; tri-level alpha support (0%, 50%, 100%). (This is an integrated digital TV set; PNG is supported as part of the UK profile for MHEG-5.)
FoneCam [Moonlight Products] (Win32) - all versions? write-only; commercial. (This is a hardware/software combo: a modem/video-camera hybrid that captures still images, and dial-up retrieval/viewing software that saves the images in various formats.)
HD1000 [Roku] (Linux) - read-only; uses libpng and zlib. (This is a media player for displaying graphics and photos, video, and audio files on high-definition TV sets.)
i-Player [Netgem] (embedded) - read-only; reportedly full alpha support. (This is a digital set-top box that incorporates a standard web browser. It appears to be the successor to or the new name for the netbox, below.)
J-PHONE handsets [J-PHONE] (embedded) - all 2001+ versions? read-only; commercial. (These are Japanese cell phones with color displays and the ability to display PNG images and, in some models, JPEG images, MNG animations, sound clips, and possibly streaming video. High-end examples include the J-SA51 and J-SA52 handsets with embedded digital cameras. Check Babelfish for an English translation of the technical/compatibility page above.)
Mediamaster DVB 9850T [Nokia] (MHEG-5) - read-only; tri-level alpha support? (This is a set-top box that decodes digital TV broadcasts for display on an existing TV set. PNG is supported as part of the UK profile for MHEG-5.)
Nokia 9210 Communicator [Nokia] (Symbian) - all versions? read-only. (This is a cell phone with a keyboard and a reasonably large, 4096-color screen. It includes e-mail, web browsing, and various office applications. PNG is supported both as a standalone image format and within the browser, presumably. The 9290 may have similar features.)
netbox [Netgem] (Linux) - read-only; binary transparency. (This was a WebTV-like set-top box for interactive TV, web browsing, e-mail, audio playback, and related functions. It conformed to European standards, and a "(free) PC Linux-based version of the browser will be available soon." This product has been discontinued. It appears to have morphed into the i-Player, above.)
PlayStation Portable [Sony] (embedded) - firmware version 1.0 and later; read-only; full alpha support as of version 2.0 (binary transparency prior to 2.0); no gamma support; commercial. (This is a handheld game console with a relatively complete embedded web browser.)
Snappy [Play] (Win32) - version 3.0 and later; write-only; commercial. (This is a hardware/software combo: a video-capture device that captures still images from any video source--videocams, TVs, VCRs--and image-manipulation and enhancement software that saves the images in various formats. This product has been discontinued, and the company is deceased.)
WaveCapture [Practical Electronic Tools] (Windows 9x) - all versions; write-only; commercial. (This is a hardware/software combo: an EISA data-capture card for Hewlett-Packard GPIB/IEEE-488 devices that can "print" high-resolution data to image files, and driver software that can convert and save to various image formats.)
WebTV [WebTV Networks / Philips / Sony] (WebTV) - versions since January 1999? read-only; no progressive display; full alpha support in versions since August 2000(?) (apparently); 32-bit alpha support (9 transparency levels; screenshots) and binary transparency for palette images (first palette entry only, regardless of number of transparent colors) in older releases; CSS background-image support; commercial. (This is a web browser embedded in a set-top box; it displays pages on a standard analog television set. See also the WebTV Viewer for Win32 on the PNG browsers page.)
X-Box [Microsoft] (Windows NT?) - all versions? read-only; uses libpng and zlib; commercial. (This is a Wintel-based game console, and at least the Dashboard app has PNG support.)

Here are some related PNG pages at this site:

Last modified 14 March 2009.