Micronas to Capitalize on Emerging Digital Terrestrial TV Market with Set-Top Box Reference Design (0318)

Continues Expansion of TV System Solutions Portfolio into Complementary Markets

Freiburg, Germany - August 11, 2003- Leveraging its comprehensive TV system solutions expertise, Micronas, a leading supplier of innovative application-specific IC system solutions for consumer electronics, multimedia and automotive electronics, today unveiled its first set-top box (STB) reference design for the growing DVB-T market opening up an emerging market opportunity for the company.

The heart of the Micronas set-top box reference design ("MicBox") consists of three ICs, the DRX 8872C DVB-T demodulator, the MDE 9515B video decoder and the DAC 3550A audio DAC. By merging these three proven chips into one printed circuit board (PCB), the new reference design enables system manufacturers to introduce leading-edge STB models into the market in the shortest possible timeframe.

In addition to the reference design, Micronas delivers a complete software solution featuring all basic STB capabilities, ranging from driver level up to the user interface.

"This new reference design is an ideal complement to our existing portfolio and is introduced to help Micronas customers to capitalize on the continuing global migration from analog to digital TV," said Peter Rost, director marketing Digital TV. "By accelerating this migration, we are opening up new market opportunities for both TV and set-top box OEMs and ODMs."

The new design provides manufacturers with a complete hardware and software solution for set-top boxes from one source and with one software platform. It benefits STB manufacturers by enabling quicker design cycles and reduced product time to market for newer models. These manufacturers can also use it as a platform for designing modules for digital TVs, PVRs and pay-TV systems. It also allows TV manufacturers, producing integrated digital TVs that currently use Micronas' MDE 95xx family, to easily expand new designs into the set-top box market.

Micronas was first to offer single-chip TV decoders for analog and digital TVs with the highly integrated MDE 95xx family. The chips feature an MPEG-2 source decoder, a high performance graphic system and an analog TV frontend around a 32-bit microcontroller. Also integrated is 32-Mbit of embedded SDRAM, eliminating the need of external DRAM components.This further reduces chip count and system costs, especially in the cost-driven low-end market segments.

The DRX 8872C provides state-of-the-art COFDM demodulation for DVB-T applications, and has been developed by Micronas Holland B.V., a recently acquired subsidiary of Microtune Inc. Thanks to its on-chip microprocessor and high-level software API, the integration of the DRX 8872C requires a minimum of engineering resources and testing, since the chip operates almost autonomously, even under changing channel conditions.

The DAC 3550A is a single-chip, high-precision, dual digital-to-analog converter designed for audio applications. The employed conversion technique is based on oversampling with noise-shaping. With Micronas' unique multibit sigma-delta technique, less sensitivity to clock jitter, high linearity, and a superior S/N ratio has been achieved. The DAC 3550A is controlled via I2C bus.

Besides the three Micronas ICs, just a few additional active and passive components are required on the PCB. Since a PCB with only two layers is used, the overall hardware is very cost effective.

The reference design for STBs from Micronas is available now.