NEC Adds Cores for Key DTV Feature: New blocks for ASICs, SOCs

Electronic News, May 3, 1999

Santa Clara, Calif.-NEC Electronics Inc. has added five new cores to its ASIC library that comprise the complete format conversion subsystem for High-Definition Television (HDTV) or digital television (DTV) receivers.

Format conversion is a key component of HDTV and DTV receivers, allowing digital signals transmitted in any format to be outputted in resolution and scanning that is compatible with any display.

Currently, the U.S. ATSC specification encompasses 18 separate formats for DTV broadcast, encompassing multiple resolutions and scan types, ranging from 480 lines with progressive scan to 1,080 lines with interlaced scan. Due to this wide range of choices, broadcasters and OEMs are facing considerable uncertainty over which of the formats will emerge as the predominate approach. To solve this problem, many receivers are using all-format conversion technology that can allow any display to accept any ATSC format signal.

Presently, most broadcasters who have begun digital transmission are using the full HDTV format of 1,080 lines interlaced scan. However, displays that support this resolution tend to be very expensive. To address this issue, some consumer OEMs are seeking to introduce receivers that can interface with less expensive, lower resolution televisions, such as standard definition TVs (SDTVs).

"There are quite a few channels that broadcast in HDTV," said Perry Mistry, senior product marketing manager for the multimedia and consumer groups at NEC Electronics, based here. "But let's say you don't have an HDTV, but you do have an SDTV. These five blocks can allow you to view HDTV on an SDTV display."

The five new cores consist of a color space converter, a digital video interface, a variable length decoder, a video de-interlacer and a video X-Y scaler. Each core will be available in the second quarter in NEC's 0.25-micron, five layer metal ASIC technology, and the company later plans to make the cores available in its 0.18- and 0.15-micron process technologies.

The cores can be used with NEC's cell-based products, which support up to 20 million gates and frequencies up to 300 megahertz.

Though the cores together can comprise the complete format conversion portion of a DTV receiver, NEC is offering the cores separately to meet the needs of customers who are missing one or more of the elements required to build such a subsystem. The cores can be used as semiconductor intellectual property for system-on-a-chip products designed by NEC customers.

In addition to working with DTV receivers, the cores can be used to enhance picture quality in conventional NTSC analog televisions, according to Mistry. Such televisions could act as bridge products between digital and analog broadcasts, providing a significantly better picture than conventional NTSC televisions when they link to DTV set- top boxes.