"The new digital TV engine enables TV manufacturers to develop and build cost-effective digital TV sets for consumer applications while remaining backward-compatible to existing analog TV infrastructure," said Peter Rost, marketing manager for digital TV and set-top box at Micronas. "The introduction of the multimedia home standard will further drive consumers to invest in interactive TV receivers - as long as they understand the stability and future security of their investment."

The multimedia home platform (MHP) will enable a fully horizontal digital TV market by defining an open and standardized programming interface for interactive TV applications. A unified market of MHP receivers, editing tools and content creation resources will provide economies of scale and a considerable market potential to all involved players. The MDE 9500 offers a platform that meets all the MHP requirements.

"Zoran is proud to be the lead developer of the first solution-on-a-chip for the exciting integrated DTV market, expected to replace, over time, the analog TV set of today", said Dr. Isaac Shenberg, Zoran's senior vice president business development. "Combining the vast experience of Zoran in digital video and audio with Micronas' TV know how greatly accelerates our opportunity to penetrate the digital TV market."

The MDE 9500 is the flagship of Micronas' single-chip mixed-signal decoder family. It combines all of the network-independent digital signal process tasks of digital receivers while supporting also analog video processing. The high-performance graphic system supports all DVB recommendations, embedded TV applications and upcoming services like interactive TV. Furthermore, the chip features interfaces to address external devices such as IEEE 1394 link layer and ATA/IDE hard-disk drives. The interfaces and the system partitioning are adjustable to different TV systems enabling the manufacturers to build up complete system solutions.

"TV and set-top box manufacturers are looking for a scalable hardware and software platform that allows implementing low-cost and full-featured products based on a single architecture," explained Rost. "With the MDE 9500 and its derivatives, Micronas offers a clear path for system manufacturers through the transition phase from analog TV into the age of IDTV."

Besides the MDE 9500, a basic version called MDE 9502 will be available. All processor-related peripherals of the MDE 9500 as well as the MPEG-related hardware controllers are connected to the microcontroller via a high-performance on-chip bus. The platform includes two independent DMA engines to support the microcontroller for the handling of external and internal data streams.

Finally, the MDE 9500 has full analog and digital Teletext support. The data slicer supports all services transmitted in the analog mode (Teletext level 2.5, NexTView, TeleWeb, WSS, VPS, CC). Digital Teletext information can be processed and displayed on chip and be reinserted in the CVBS output signal.

Micronas Semiconductor Holding AG, Technopark, Technoparkstrasse 1 CH-8005 Zurich Switzerland. Phone:. +41-1-445-3960; Fax +41-1-445-3961.

Zoran Corporation 3112 Scott Boulevard Santa Clara, CA 95054. Phone: 408- 919-4111 Fax: 408-919-4122.

In the coming years, IDTVs are expected to replace analog TVs with separate digital set-top-boxes. Cahners In-Stat Group predicts that the global market for digital TVs will reach over US$4 billion by 2004, up from $800 million in 2000.

Development of the MDE 9500 chip family required the sharing of IP from Micronas, a Swiss company and Zoran, a Santa Clara, CA company. The Micronas-Zoran relationship is interesting since Micronas has a track record of semiconductor manufacturing for the television industry and Zoran has built expertise in audio, video compression and integration technologies. By combining their resources, the partners can deliver a high-performance, high-quality solution for the Digital TV and Set-Top-Box market. This is an important intermediary step in the development of the all-digital TV. I especially like it because it combines on a single-chip all the network-independent digital signal process tasks of digital receivers while supporting the analog video processing. The chip also has a neat interface feature to address external devices such as IEEE 1394 link layer and hard-disk drives. But it doesn't stop there; it is adjustable to different TV systems so manufacturers can make complete system solutions. This could be the right transition chip for manufacturers wanting to offer digital TVs.

The MDE 950x family has a programmable platform built around a 32-bit microcontroller. The ICs operate at 3.3 V and 1.8 V and are packaged in Plastic Ball Grid Arrays. An on-chip bus is another important feature that the companies implemented to tie peripherals, including MPEG-related hardware to the microcontroller. The two independent DMA engines to support the microcontroller for the handling of external and internal data streams was another powerful addition. It integrates a DVB-compliant MPEG-2 source decoder, embedded DRAM, a high-performance graphic system, and components like analog decoder, FBA encoder, and VBI data slicer for full support of analog broadcasting.

Micronas and Zoran are currently evaluating first silicon of the MDE 9500. In October, the complete development environment will be available to lead customers. Of the two partners, it will be primarily Micronas to market the chip.