Mobile TV
Oct 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Carolyn Schuk
New solutions signal a fresh start for the stalled PCTV market.
Software demodulation
Another 2008 entry into the PCTV arena is Mirics Semiconductor, which signed its first OEM deal for its FlexiTV multistandard receiver chip and configurable software demodulator. (See Figure 1.) A host processor-based software system originally targeting dual-core x86 notebooks, FlexiTV is ideal for ultraportables such as Netbooks and mobile Internet devices (MIDs), where maintaining battery life is critical. For example, with ISDB-T 1-Seg, software demodulation running on an N270 Atom processor consumes a CPU load of only 20 percent.
“With a purely hardware solution you have to spin new silicon,” says Chet Babla, Mirics product line director. “All we have to do is redevelop the algorithm. You give new software to OEMs, and instantly their product lines are upgraded. With hardware, you're looking at six to nine months.”
But software demodulation “isn't easy to do and do efficiently,” Babla admits. “You don't want to max out the CPU. We had software and algorithmic expertise within the company — a novel combination of skills.”
Mirics leverages DSP-like instruction sets available on the processor platform to ensure that the demodulation is efficient. Since then, Mirics has extended FlexiTV to support China's DTTB standard, Japan's ISDB-T (1-Seg), and the Intel Atom CPU and ARM-based platforms. The aim is encouraging both embedded and add-on mobile TV and radio functionality for ultra-portable and low-power Netbooks and MIDs. The strategy appears to have worked. In September, Mirics signed agreements with PCTV accessory makers Quincy Digital of Korea and Skycast of Brazil.
Multistandard receivers
PCTV got another boost this year from graphics processor company NVIDIA and PC accessory maker Hauppage Computer Works. NVIDIA chose Siano Mobile Silicon's SMS1150 mobile TV receiver chip to provide PCTV on its next-generation Tegra Netbook. The multistandard receiver enables both SD and HD mobile TV, and supports DVB-T, ISDB-T, DVB-H, DAB, T-DMB and CMMB standards — opening up potential market opportunities nearly everywhere in the world except North America.
Mirics’ multistandard FlexiTV PCTV tuner features a configurable software demodulator.
Click image to enlarge.
Hauppauge partnered with MaxLinear to build an embedded PCTV module for the North American (ATSC) market. This is the third generation of MaxLinear's configurable MxL5007T chip, which supports terrestrial TV standards, including ATSC, DVB-T, DVB-H and DTMB.
“The fully configurable architecture means, from an inventory management perspective, you only have one part number, and you configure it depending on where you're shipping to,” says Stefan Szasz, MaxLinear director of marketing.
Even simpler for OEMs is Cresta-Tech's multistandard CrestaTV software PCTV tuner, which supports all standards and decides on the fly which one to use. (See Figure 2.)
“OEMs want to build one product for the mass market, not one product for every different market,” says Ramon Cazares, CrestaTech marketing and sales vice president.
CrestaTV has its roots in founder George Haber's tech DNA. Haber's guiding axiom is: “If it can be done in software, it will.” Almost 20 years ago, when multimedia chipmakers were focused on dedicated video decoder chips, Haber founded CompCore Multimedia and developed the first software video decoder using the CPU's processing power.
CrestaTV scans the entire TV spectrum for analog, digital and cable-in-the-clear signals, Cazares explains. However, the integrated GPS enables a directed, intelligent scan.
“The tuner knows where you are and what channels you should be able to receive,” he says. “This directed scan takes three seconds as opposed to 20 or 30 minutes.”
This is where the software beats hardware, according to Cazares. In silicon, you need to minimize the number of registers and the amount of memory. Otherwise die size explodes.
CrestaTech’s CrestaTV software PCTV tuner supports all standards and decides on-the-fly which one to use.
Click image to enlarge.
“If you do it in software,” he explains, “you can make the registers as big as you need — there's no cost penalty — and turn specific algorithms on or off by region.”
In order to minimize CPU load, CrestaTV uses a dual antenna system with two tuners.
“We take the output of one tuner and loop it back to the other tuner, and send the optimal signal to the CPU for demodulation,” Cazares explains. “Our benchmark is to be 50 percent of the [CPU] load or less — similar to a DVD.”
Power use is likewise comparable to a DVD player, he adds.
While these solutions have yet to appear on retailer shelves, Noronha sees a big opportunity when they do — possibly later this year.
“With Netbooks, a huge adoption of these devices is in emerging markets,” he says. “Consumers, who previously didn't have access to computers, now have access because of the low price. TV is ubiquitous — it needs no introduction. And in the developing world, TV is the main conduit for information. And, this feature has received tremendous interest from focus groups by tier one manufacturers. People have been screaming about this feature, not a fingerprint sensor.”
Carolyn Schuk is editor of Broadcast Engineering Mobile TV Update.
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