Terry, The only communication is from one guy at LGE in Korea. He, at least, thanked me for the input. The only thing I've heard from Glenview in recent weeks is a rejection of my request to be on the distribution list of "Zenith Today", their weekly newsletter.
Lucent is heating up the HDTV arena and will be coming out with a HDTV compatible chip as early as LGE. This should push the HDTV and SDTV market a lot quicker than previously anticipated and bring VSBi royalty payments to Zenith as early as the second quarter '98.
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"Lucent Technologies Launches First Digital Television -DTV- Receiver
Chip for US Market November 13, 1997 BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE) -- Lucent Technologies' Microelectronics Group announced today the first single-chip receiver for the North American digital television (DTV) standard. DTV is a new technology that will allow the broadcast industry to transmit a mix of crisp digital video, CD-quality audio and data to home TVs, personal computers (PCs), set-top boxes and other digital appliances.
The AV8100 is a complete system on a chip that can receive terrestrial broadcasts of high definition television (HDTV), multichannel standard definition television (SDTV), and broadcast data. It is the first commercially-available single-chip vestigial side-band (VSB) receiver compliant with the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standard. VSB is the North American modulation standard for TV broadcasting.
"Our new receiver chip will help bring about a new generation of
DTV-based products and services," said Ahmed Nawaz, vice president of
network communications ICs at Lucent's Microelectronics Group. "
Consumers will be able to receive new types of digital broadcast services such as web casting, stock price updates, software distribution and other interactive media thanks to enabling devices like ours."
The AV8100 is part of a high-definition television (HDTV) receiver chip set Lucent and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO) have been jointly developing. Mitsubishi is now testing the chip for implementation into its front-end RF tuner and other products.
"For several months, we've been verifying the ability of the AV8100
algorithms, programmed on Lucent test boards, to receive ATSC signals
over the air," said Tommy Poon, senior vice president of Mitsubishi
Electric ITA Advanced Television Laboratories. "Those experiments have
been very successful and now we've started testing the chip itself in
conjunction with Mitsubishi's RF tuner system and video and au dio
decoder and display processor components."
The AV8100 chip interfaces with a variety of RF tuner front-ends to
receive incoming DTV signals from terrestrial broadcast stations. In
addition, it performs three core VSB reception functions on a single
chip. This integration reduces power consumption, system cost, component count and board space. Capable of receiving all 18 of the ATSC formats including HDTV as well as multi-channel SDTV and data broadcasts, the AV8100 receives digital signals at rates of up to 19.39 Mbits/sec.
The AV8100 is available in a 160-pin, plastic quad flat pack and is
manufactured in advanced 0.35-micron, 3.3-volt, CMOS process technology for high performance and low power dissipation. Lucent has begun sampling the chip to beta-site customers and will start commercial sampling early in 1998. Volume production will begin within the second quarter of 1998 and is expected to fuel the availability of
consumer-based DTV products by the fall of 1998. |
