More on the LG HDTV chip set. LG is one of the Mpact crowd............
Digital TV Silicon -- Five-piece set will
display 1,080-interlaced output -- LG
Electronics unveils its initial HDTV chip set
December 3, 1997
Electronic Engineering Times via Individual Inc. : Las Vegas - LG Electronics Inc.
showed working silicon of its first-generation digital TV chip set and detailed plans for
the chip set's future at the recent Comdex show here. The Vestigial-sideband Super Star
(VSS) chip set is sampling now for a whopping $1,000, a price the company hopes to trim
to below $200 by the end of next year.
"This chip set is too expensive, but that is its only problem," said Hee-Bok Park, a senior
research engineer in LG's DTV group (Seoul, South Korea)
The first-generation set consists of five chips: two handle the vestigial- sideband (VSB)
decoding and three deal with video signal processing. The set decodes all 18 formats
defined by the Grand Alliance but displays only high- definition, 1,080 interlaced output.
The VSB parts were developed in cooperation with Zenith Electronics, which holds key
VSB patents. LG has a majority interest in Zenith.
The LG chip set will be used by Zenith in a set-top box slated to ship with a projection
TV monitor in the second quarter of next year. Zenith also plans to build it into a
direct-view HDTV set by the end of next year, Park said.
Intel is sampling the VSB portion of the chip set for possible use in a high- speed
modem, Park added. LG is also sampling the chip set to Sharp, Philips and JVC, among
others, although it does not expect the chips to see mainstream use, due to their cost.
Instead, the company has turned its attention to crafting a second-generation chip set
that would display only standard-definition TV (at 480 interlaced or progressive) and
sell for as little as $100. It's also planning another chip set that could output standard or
high-definition pictures and sell for about $200. Both chip sets are expected to be
available before the end of next year.
The new chip sets will be fabricated in either a 0.35- or 0.25-micron process to help
reduce costs and aid integration, said Park. The first-generation parts were made in a
0.6-micron process. The standard-definition (SD) chip set will likely consist of just two
chips-a VSB device and a video processor. The high- definition/standard-definition
(HD/SD) chip set probably will have three components, two of them dedicated to video
processing.
The second-generation designs will also move from synchronous DRAM to Rambus to
further lower costs and reduce parts and pin count, Park added. "We have plenty of
room to optimize this design," he said.
By supporting only 1080i-out in its first-generation part, LG believes TV makers can
deliver a less expensive HDTV set than one using a competing chip set from Lucent
Technologies and Mitsubishi. Their chip set supports either standard or high definition,
but requires a more expensive multisynchronous monitor to support the two modes. In
addition, Park said the LG chip set includes a number of conventional TV features-such
as multiple picture-in-picture and zoom-not found on the Lucent/Mitsubishi chips.
Sanyo supplies an analog demodulation chip used at the front end of LG's VSS chip set,
which Park claimed gives the system a performance boost over a digital demodulator
used in the Mitsubishi/Lucent chips. However, LG does have plans to replace the part
with its own digital demodulator in a future version.
The VSB portion of the first-generation chip set has a channel equalizer, which Park
claimed boosts the robustness of the chip set by a hundredfold over a similar chip set
used in an early Zenith prototype TV in terms of reliably receiving a terrestrial broadcast
signal.
Besides announced DTV chips from Mitsubishi/Lucent and Motorola/Sarnoff (see Nov.
10, page 4), Park expects significant competition from companies such as Thomson and
Sony.
The latter company is reportedly preparing a video processing chip set for a
standard-definition TV that is said to do an excellent job of filtering an HD-2 signal
down to a crisp SD resolution. The Sony chip set is on track for delivery in the middle of
next year . It is expected to use Rambus memory and provide connectivity with a wide
range of peripherals, including PCs and digital satellite receivers.
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Copyright (c) 1997 CMP Media Inc.
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