First Look:

Texas Instruments is serious about live mobile digital TV

By Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb
(10/23/04, 09:46:52 AM PT)

Dallas, Texas – It should not be too long before mobile users can watch their  favorite real-life TV broadcasts on their mobile phone, thanks to the "Hollywood"  chip Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is developing for cell phones. 

TI has just begun internal testing of prototypes of the Hollywood single chip digital TV for cell phones, designed to capture broadcast signals and allow cell phone users to watch live broadcasts ranging from their favorite reality TV shows to major sporting events and breaking news. 

"Hollywood" builds on TI's current capabilities in the converging wireless and consumer electronics markets, including high-quality streamed video content on 2.5G and 3G handsets via its OMAP multimedia processors.  

Integrated onto a single chip are a tuner, OFDM  demodulator and channel decoder processor, which has the job of presenting the transport stream to the OMAP processor  and zero-IF front end similar to the one used in the development of its single-chip Bluetooth radio.  

The resulting single-chip receiver can process and decode both Europe-based Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld (DVB-H) and the Japanese Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting"Terrestrial (ISDB-T) DTV signals.  

It can also video at 24 to 30 frames per second with high-quality audio as compared to the 1 to 15 frames per second now available on current cellular networks.

According to Gilles Delfassy, Senior Vice President and General Manager for TI's Wireless Terminals Business Unit,  the “Hollywood" digital TV chip will support newly established and open digital TV broadcast standards for the wireless industry.  

“While no single standard will be used worldwide, TI believes that the most prevalent standards will be those that are open and non-proprietary,” he said, ”including Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld (DVB-H), which was developed for Europe and is expected to extend to North America, and the Japanese specification, Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting - Terrestrial (ISDB-T). " 

The new "Hollywood" chip, he said, will support DVB-H and ISDB-T. Defassy said that dedicated wireless networks supporting these standards are in development which will feature high- quality live broadcast TV (24-30 frames per second) paired with full audio to offer a more robust mobile viewing experience versus the one-to-15-frames-per- second streaming capability offered via cellular.  

These networks, he said, could also support services once reserved for the living room and bring  them to the cell phone, including pay-per-view programming, interactive television, and menu/guide systems. 

Hollywood, he said, will use TI's advanced 90-nanometer process technology to allow for maximum power efficiency, smaller board area and lower overall system costs. TI expects to provide samples of the "Hollywood" chip to customers in 2006. The offering will also include all needed software for television signal processing.  

Delfassy said first products based on the new chip will coincide with the first mobile digital TV infrastructure mass deployments in 2007. Field trials are currently underway in several regions, including the U.S., Europe and Japan. 

To learn more, go to www.ti.com/wireless.