LSI Logic Corp has secured a deal with the British Broadcasting Company to jointly develop a single chip digital terrestrial television solution, for use with set top boxes and digital television receivers. The company wants to beat Motorola Corp and other competitors, Siemens AG and SGS Thomson Microelectronics NV to market with a demodulation solution which will be at the center of digital terrestrial set-top boxes and televisions using existing television antennas when the UK launches its digital terrestrial television service in the summer next year. The jointly developed BBC/LSI Logic demodulation L64780 chip will receive digital terrestrial broadcast signals, then process them to form a digital data stream containing digital television services. Motorola is currently working with systems house, DMV in the hope of bringing a three chip receiver solution to market by the third quarter of this year but the, LSI/BBC solution, slated for early next year will form part of a more sophisticated two chip receiver solution. The L64780 is a single-chip OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex) demodulator which will includes all DTTV demodulation functions and associated memories. A complete terrestrial receiver will require only one other chip with the forward error correction function to work properly. Our target is to produce a single chip solution including FEC forward error correction by the end of 1998. said Philip Sadot marketing manager in the consumer segment at LSI. The set top box and digital receiver market is ready to explode. Many European broadcasters plan to deploy digital terrestrial programs over the next few years, the UK will launch its services in the summer of 1998 and another major market, Japan, is currently developing its plans for digital terrestrial television. According to market watchers Dataquest, in Europe alone, 237 million households currently view terrestrial broadcasts via their existing television antennas.
