Sunnyvale Company Provides Digital Key (For When Broadcast TV is Not Available to Regular TVs)

Siliconvalley.com ^ | Wed, Nov. 30, 2005 | Mike Langberg

[nickcarraway]

Zoran, a little-known chip company in Sunnyvale, is providing a big service to Silicon Valley by smoothing the long and bumpy road from analog to digital television.

In about three years, all the familiar analog VHF and UHF channels -- such as 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, 36 and 44 in the Bay Area -- will go away and the stations now at those numbers will be available only on digital channels. That's potentially a big problem for the estimated 15 million households who get their television over the air through rabbit ears or roof antennas.

Those folks won't be able to receive these, or any, digital channels over the air on a regular TV set without the addition of a converter box. And if that converter box is too expensive on the day VHF and UHF die, millions of citizens suddenly deprived of ``Jeopardy'' and ``Lost'' could riot in the streets.

Zoran is easing the potential pain with a new chip called the SupraHD 640 and related software that should make it possible to sell converter boxes for $50 when the transition happens -- far below the $200 to $300 cost of converters today.

Last month, the Senate set a deadline of April 7, 2009, for the analog shutdown. The date was picked because it's just after the college basketball Final Four, and there are apparently a lot of basketball fans among our elected leaders. Earlier, the House set a date of Dec. 31, 2008.

The House and Senate are expected to resolve their timing differences before the end of December, settling on a single date. And they'll compromise on the amount of money to spend on a program to subsidize the cost of converters. The House now wants to allocate about $1 billion for subsidies, while the Senate is looking at $3 billion. The subsidy programs could ultimately offer $40 a converter, so the final cost to consumers in early 2009 might be only $10 for each box.

Most of the 110 million U.S. households with TVs have nothing to worry about.

If you get TV through a cable or satellite set-top box, that box will convert digital signals for viewing on your regular, non-HD set. If you get cable service without a set-top box, by plugging your TV directly into a cable jack, your cable operator will probably come up with a solution. You'll either get a set-top box or the cable system will convert digital signals to analog before they reach your house.

But an estimated 15 million households, about 14 percent of the total, get their TV the old-fashioned way: over the air from local TV broadcasting towers. These are the people who will need converters.

There are also mixed households, with a TV in the living room that's attached to cable or satellite, but a second TV in a bedroom or kitchen that's only receiving channels over the air. These second TVs will also need converters.

Eventually, converters won't be needed at all. The Federal Communications Commission last year ordered TV manufacturers to start putting digital tuners into TV sets. By the end of 2007, all new TVs will be capable of receiving digital over-the-air broadcasts. As older non-digital TVs are junked, demand for converters will shrivel -- although it's likely to be many years before every last analog TV disappears.

Congress desperately wants to make this transition happen, if only because the vacated analog TV channels will be auctioned by the federal government for an estimated $30 billion -- a significant cash infusion in this era of soaring deficits.

Silicon Valley also has a big stake in the transition because the frequencies are likely to be used for advanced wireless services that will create lots of demand for new hardware and software.

Meanwhile, Zoran took an important step forward Monday by announcing a ``reference design,'' a kind of blueprint, for using its SupraHD 640 chip to build low-cost converters.

David Pederson, Zoran's vice president of corporate marketing, said Tuesday that the reference design should make it possible for manufacturers to start producing and selling converter boxes in the second half of next year for under $100, with the price dropping to $50 by late 2008 as Zoran develops even more efficient and inexpensive chips.

The SupraHD 640 can also be used to add low-cost digital reception to TVs. Instead of boosting the cost of TVs by about $300, what it now costs to include digital, Pederson estimates the price increase will be $40 in 2007 and just $20 to $30 by late 2008.

So chip companies such as Zoran and its competitors, including ATI Technologies of Markham, Ontario, get to sell millions of digital video chips for TVs and converters. TV manufacturers get to sell the sizzle of digital -- digital broadcasts look much better than analog even after conversion for viewing on non-high definition TVs, somewhat like the difference between DVDs and VHS tapes. The sound, too, is superior.

Pederson concluded, probably without much exaggeration: ``Nobody loses in this deal.''

[supercat]

Oh, maybe a 10 foot cube filled with line...

And that's "absolutely trivial"?

My understanding of delay lines is that they tend to add a fair amount of "fuzziness" to the signal going through. If the signal is only being delayed by a few hundred nanoseconds, it can remain reasonably clear, but delaying a signal for tens of microseconds while retaining 100ns accuity would seem difficult. I know storage tubes could almost certainly do it, but those would seem to be overkill in a consumer-grade television set.

The only thing I can really imagine could have been done differently with a color standard while remaining easy to decode would have been to do something like what VHS does, amplitude-modulating R-Y and B-Y at different carrier frequencies. This would have had some advantages, I guess, but I think bandwidth issues would be a problem.

[mikegi]

...Now, about 40 years later, we are still stuck with a system that was designed to be compatible with TVs that have been in the landfill for nearly 40 years. I hope they don't screw up digital TV the same way.

Too late. Digital TV signals are screwed up to maintain source compatibility with the 40 year-old, landfill TVs. Why they didn't go with a non-interlaced, progressive resolution digital signal is beyond me. Instead of converting the old video/film/whatever to the new format with a few pieces of expensive equipment at the broadcasters, we're stuck with crappy low end converters in millions/billions of HDTV sets. A total pooch screw, imho.

[The Red Zone]

Being silly of course. There would be a snake of line, but in big tube type sets it wouldn't have any trouble fitting somewhere in the cabinet.

Another way with no delay line would be to present blue, green, red in sequence and the tube would scan them each in succession before ratcheting down to the next line. It would require a stairstep function generator for the vertical scan but that is doable with tubes. The corresponding monochrome would do the same except of course with only one gun.

[supercat]

Another way with no delay line would be to present blue, green, red in sequence and the tube would scan them each in succession before ratcheting down to the next line. It would require a stairstep function generator for the vertical scan but that is doable with tubes. The corresponding monochrome would do the same except of course with only one gun.

Unfortunately, doing this would result in the set producing only 1/3 of normal brightness for a given amount of electron-beam power. Since pushing the electrons too hard will increase X-ray emissions, I wouldn't think that would be considered a good thing.