Synapid,
Anyone know whether TeraLogic, CUBE, ESST or any other's digital
TV chip is used in this digital TV set? If ESS is not selling one
now, will ESS design one soon?
Mr. Chen also commented on the VCD/SuperVCD/DVD players market in
China at the end of this article.
Rishi
eetimes.com
Chinese supplier preps low-cost digital TVs
for U.S. market
By George Leopold and Junko Yoshida
EE Times
(01/13/99, 11:36 a.m. EDT)
LAS VEGAS ¡X A top Chinese TV-set manufacturer is eyeing the U.S.
digital-TV market, and plans to start selling comparatively low-priced sets
here by Christmas 1999.
Konka Group Co. Ltd., (Shenzhen, China) and its U.S. subsidiary in San
Jose, Calif., could be part of the first wave of Chinese manufacturers to
target the middle and low end of the U.S. digital-TV receiver market. Price
tags for rear-projection and direct-view HDTV receivers sold by European
and other Asian manufacturers range from $3,000 to $13,000.
In an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) earlier this month,
Chen Wei-rong, Konka's director and general manager, said the company is
ramping up HDTV production for the U.S. market in time for the Christmas
season. Chen said Konka is currently evaluating competing HDTV chip sets
from STMicroelectronics and Philips Semiconductors, and will decide by the
end of March which to incorporate into its HDTV design.
A raft of consumer-electronics companies including Sony, Panasonic,
Thomson Consumer Electronics and Philips Electronics are introducing new
HDTV receivers into the U.S. market. Konka, which has had little success
penetrating the U.S. market through OEM deals, is now hoping to take
advantage of the dawn of the digital-TV era to promote its products in the
United States under its own brand name.
Chen called the U.S. market "attractive, but tough," adding that "the crucial
thing is technology and capability."
Indeed, Konka is ambitious about exports. Although Konka, in 1998, shipped
only 300,000 TV sets overseas out of the 4.7 million sets it produced, "Our
goal is to make the domestic and export shipment ratio 50:50 in five years,"
Chen said.
The high cost of HDTV receivers and limited U.S. digital broadcasts have
slowed consumer acceptance of digital TV in the United States. The
Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association (CEMA; Arlington, Va.)
announced here that 13,176 digital TVs have been sold to retailers so far.
"All of the major manufacturers have stepped up," said CEMA president
Gary Shapiro.
Konka, which holds 22 percent of the Chinese television market, unveiled a
line of HDTV and "improved-definition" TVs at CES. The latter converts
analog signals to digital, using a technique called line doubling to improve
resolution.
By fall, Chen said Konka will introduce "affordable" HDTV receivers, like
its 32-inch, 16 x 9 aspect-ratio, direct-view model, for under $3,000. A
standard-definition version that doesn't use a costly flat screen tube will sell
for about $2,000, he said.
On the Chinese domestic-market front, a decision on its own terrestrial
digital broadcast standard isn't expected before October. For now, China is
using the cable and satellite version of the European Digital Video Broadcast
(DVB) standard, but industry officials said DVB may not be the long-term
solution for terrestrial broadcasting.
Beijing plans to demonstrate the U.S. Advanced Television Systems
Committee spec in China this year. Chinese standard setters are also
considering coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing over the
U.S.-backed vestigial-side-band (VSB) modulation scheme. Some U.S.
broadcasters reportedly complained at CES that the 8-VSB modulation spec
may not carry digital TV signals prone to multipath interference, or ghosting,
to its viewers without costly antenna upgrades.
Konka is meanwhile stepping up its digital TV software/middleware
development efforts at research facilities in Shenzhen and San Jose, Chen
said. It plans to open a European research center by the end of 1999.
Along with digital TV, Konka is also promoting its DVD players in China
and overseas. With DVD player prices expected to drop to $250 by the end
of the year in China, Konka expects to produce about 500,000 players in
1999. About 100,000 will be manufactured for export, Chen said. Konka is
using C-Cube's DVD player chip set, enabling its player to play back both
video CD and super video CD disks as well as DVD titles.
The confusion over similar but incompatible formats such as super video CD,
China video CD and video CD have, however, slowed the Chinese market in
1998, Chen acknowledged. Overall video-CD player sales declined from 8
million sets in 1997 to roughly 7 million units in 1998, with 2 million units of
super-video-CD players and 5 million for video-CD players.
Chen predicted that 1999 is likely to be the first year when sales of DVD
players will substantially increase in China, matching the combined sales of
super-video-CD and video-CD players.
Chinese manufacturers are expected to crank out up to 3 million DVD
players in 1999, while they are also expected to make 2 million
super-video-CD players and one to two million video-CD players, according
to Chen.
Global chip vendors have been working hard to penetrate the Chinese
market with their DVD player chip sets. However, the lack of domestic
expertise in China to manufacture the DVD-ROM drive mechanism,
including its laser pick-up, has been a major factor in keeping the cost of
DVD players high in China. The supply of DVD drives is controlled by
Japanese manufacturers and Philips, said Chen.
But that situation may change quickly this year. By the end of 1999, Chinese
companies expect to manufacture costly DVD-ROM drives under license
from joint-venture partners Sanyo, Philips and Panasonic. |
