Philips Semiconductors Inc of Sunnyvale, California has released a three-chip offering aimed at the digital satellite broadcast set-top box market. It is designed to cut the number of chips needed for down-conversion and demodulation from five chips and improve performance at a cost of 20% below existing offerings, it says. Based on Philips’ TDA8060 Zero-IF Down Converter, the chipset can handle DVB or DSS broadcast in the 950 MHz to 2200 MHz frequency band. The chipset reduces component and assembly costs by removing the need for intermediate frequency components such as an Intermediate Frequency oscillator and mixer. For QPSK down-conversion/demodulation of the satellite dish output into an MPEG-2 data stream, the TDA8060 chip needs to be combined with a TDA8043 or TDA8044 QPSK Demodulator/Forward ErrorCorrector chip and a TSA5512 PLL Frequency Synthesizer. The chip-set and the tuner module, both manufactured at Philips Semiconductors’ facility in Caen, France, are available now. The individual components of the chipset cost $3.00 for the TDA8060; $11.40 for the TDA8043/TDA8044; and $0.73 for the TSA5512 in quantities of 100,000.
