IPTV Feature Article
October 13, 2009
Mirics and Shanghai HDIC Introduce Digital TV Reference Design for Portable and Desktop PC Devices
By Raju Shanbhag, TMCnet Contributor
Targeting the complete range of portable and desktop PC devices, Mirics Semiconductor and Shanghai High Definition Digital Technology Industrial Company Ltd ("HDIC"), have introduced a digital TV reference design. The standard-definition (SD) and high-definition (HD) transmission modes addressed by these reference designs are supported by the Digital Television Terrestrial Broadcast (DTTB) standard.
The Chinese DTTB standard describes the system structure, randomization for energy dispersal, channel coding, interleaving, constellation mapping, framing structure, processing of frame information, processing of baseband signals and RF signals in every 8MHz digital television band in UHF and VHF spectrum.
Developed under the strategic partnership between the two companies, the production-ready reference design is available in a USB dongle form factor. The design features Mirics' FlexiRF chip tuner, HDIC's low power DTTB demodulator, USB interfacing and PC-based application software for audio and video playback.
This dongle design allows the PC users enjoy the benefits of digital TV, and in particular the superior user experience of HD content. This is possible because the design enables existing personal computer platforms such as All-in-One (AIO) PCs and portable notebooks and netbooks to support DTTB-based TV reception.
In a release, Dr. Joseph Chu, VP APAC, Mirics, said: “Mirics is extremely pleased with the rapid progress made by the two companies in developing a commercial DTTB solution for PCs so soon after the strategic collaboration was first announced. It is a strong validation of the technical and collaborative capabilities of each company.”
In August 2007, DTTB (formal reference GB20600-2006) became the mandatory digital terrestrial TV standard for Chinese broadcasters. Mirics plans to demonstrate this DTTB reference design soon in an event.
The company recently announced that it has developed a global broadcast TV solution for NVIDIA (News - Alert) graphics processing units. Universal low-cost TV receiver can now be implemented on entry-level PCs that have CUDA-enabled NVIDIA GPUs by leveraging the parallel NVIDIA CUDA architecture for the Mirics FlexiTV software-based receiver. FlexiTV uses separate CUDA compute engines for video decoding, offering high definition broadcast TV reception.
The Chinese DTTB standard describes the system structure, randomization for energy dispersal, channel coding, interleaving, constellation mapping, framing structure, processing of frame information, processing of baseband signals and RF signals in every 8MHz digital television band in UHF and VHF spectrum.
Developed under the strategic partnership between the two companies, the production-ready reference design is available in a USB dongle form factor. The design features Mirics' FlexiRF chip tuner, HDIC's low power DTTB demodulator, USB interfacing and PC-based application software for audio and video playback.
This dongle design allows the PC users enjoy the benefits of digital TV, and in particular the superior user experience of HD content. This is possible because the design enables existing personal computer platforms such as All-in-One (AIO) PCs and portable notebooks and netbooks to support DTTB-based TV reception.
In a release, Dr. Joseph Chu, VP APAC, Mirics, said: “Mirics is extremely pleased with the rapid progress made by the two companies in developing a commercial DTTB solution for PCs so soon after the strategic collaboration was first announced. It is a strong validation of the technical and collaborative capabilities of each company.”
In August 2007, DTTB (formal reference GB20600-2006) became the mandatory digital terrestrial TV standard for Chinese broadcasters. Mirics plans to demonstrate this DTTB reference design soon in an event.
The company recently announced that it has developed a global broadcast TV solution for NVIDIA (News - Alert) graphics processing units. Universal low-cost TV receiver can now be implemented on entry-level PCs that have CUDA-enabled NVIDIA GPUs by leveraging the parallel NVIDIA CUDA architecture for the Mirics FlexiTV software-based receiver. FlexiTV uses separate CUDA compute engines for video decoding, offering high definition broadcast TV reception.
Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Raju’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Patrick Barnard
