HDTV Comes to the PC

Electronic News, Nov 8, 1999 by Peter Brown

San Jose -- Conexant Systems Inc., Newport Beach, Calif., today is unveiling what it claims is the first high definition television (HDTV) reference design offering for PCs.

The reference design, dubbed the DStreamATSC single-card design platform, will offer NTSC/ATSC receiver cards in PCs for HDTV at a price point somewhere in the range of $150.

"There is a bucket-load of board-level solutions in today's digital receiver world but none of them delivers full high-definition capability," said Eileen Carlson, product line manager for computer products at Conexant Systems. "We can provide a comparable experience with our offering to that of an $8,000 full-fledged HDTV system without having to pay for it."

The reference design combines Conexant's Fusion 878A PCI video decoder with Sony's tuner technology and Oren's HDTV demodulation technology. The design platform also includes Ravisent's CineMaster HDTV all-software MPEG-2 format decoder. This is the first in a planned family of reference design platforms for the PC/DTV market. Future reference designs will feature other types of demodulators and tuners. The initial design platform delivers full quality decoding and playback of broadcast digital television signals including 720 progressive format at 60 frames per second and the 1080 interlaced format at 30 frames per second, Carlson said.

Cahners In-Stat Group, a market research firm based in Scottsdale, Ariz., forecasts the market for DTV tuners for personal computer to grow to approximately 3 million units by 2002. Some of these cards will be combo analog-digital cards but all will support DTV in some sense. Conexant is looking at raising the bar for tuner cards in the coming years.

"This will give people an entry experience to the HDTV experience and will explode the consumer market for DTVs as the price for overall systems begins to come down," Carlson said.

Many people in the consumer market believe that PCs may be the first mass market for digital television because the prices for the technology are cheaper than paying for the $8,000 to $10,000 HDTVs. There have been numerous analog and low-end digital cards popping up on the market but Conexant says there has yet to be an HDTV offering.

"If they can come out with a card for under $150, it will really put the pressure on the analog card makers," said Scott Hudson, senior analyst at Cahners In-Stat Group. "I can see this being a good way for OEMs to differentiate themselves from their competition, especially for the next holiday season when these cards will be available."

A card based on the technology from Conexant will run on a 600MHz Pentium III-based PC and is VGA graphics card independent, so OEMs can use the graphics chip of their choice, including Nvidia, ATI, S3 and 3DFX. Carlson said that Conexant is looking for both board and PC firms to adopt the technology. He said the graphics companies would be good potential customers since most already have board capabilities and some already do tuner cards. These boards based on the reference design as well as having the technology designed into PCs by OEMs are slated to appear in the first half of next year.