It's all in the chips....
Korea Economic Weekly 10/27 "LG Electronics unveiled what the company calls is the world's first commercial prototype of a integrated circuit (IC) chip set for digital televisions.
The digital TV chip set is comprised of two different chips for
receiving digital TV broadcast signal, and three different chips for
converting the broadcast signal into TV images.
The company said that the IC set is not only in full compliance with the standard for the digital televisions set by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), but is applicable to high-definition (HD) televisions.
The digital TV chip set, which has cost $100.8 million over the past seven years, will give LG Electronics a critical edge in its race with other competitors from all around the world for the emerging digital TV market as the development is expected to contribute greatly to the reduction in both size and cost, Seo Pyong-won, vice president of LG Electronics said.
Millions of micro chips which would be necessary to build a digital TV
with the view of current technological level will be replaced by the
five-chip set, Seo said.
Seo said that LG Electronics is already receiving a flood of orders for the IC set from the world's leading TV companies, including Sharp
Philips, Sony and Thompson with the company adhering to the policy to
supply the micro chips on a selective basis.
The big names in the world TV industry such as Mitsubishi, Thompson and RCA are trying to conquer the technology for digital TV chips, but none of them have reached the commercialization of the technology, according to Seo.
An official at LG Electronics said that the company will be able to ship digital TVs which contain the chip sets starting in August next year. "
--------------------------------------------------------------------
In a previous article from Korea, April 1998 was given as the shipment date. This could be for a limited amount of HDTV sets to be showcased at Zenith dealers during the same time Divx units are being introduced.
The bottom line is that LGE is going to be able to allocate chips to CE manufacturers "on a selected basis" and certainly will allocate the first shipments for LGE/Zenith HDTV and SDTV distribution. |
