Motorola’s Semiconductor Products Division has launched what it claims is the first single-chip for the digital terrestrial TV market. Developed with UK-based digital video compression specialist NDS, the MC92314DH chip demodulates and decodes digital terrestrial broadcast signals that comply with the DVB-T 2K carrier specification. It includes three major blocks: 2K Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (COFDM) demodulation; 2K-mode Fast Fourier Transform (2K-FFT) processing; and Forward Error Correction. The output is an MPEG-2 stream for use in digital TV sets or set-top boxes. Motorola plans to have the chip available for the European market by the end of 1998, priced at below $20 for volume purchase. First samples together with an evaluation board are available now. In addition, Motorola is developing a version of the chip for customers needing both 2K and 8K implementation, which will be launched before the end of 1998.
