Zoran venture targets 'ghost-buster' TV ICs

Electronic News, Sept 4, 1995 by Anthony Cataldo

SANTA CLARA, CALIF. - Taking aim at the worldwide TV market, Zoran Corp. has teamed with The Goldtron Group of Singapore to spin off a new company that will develop ICs designed to correct wed TV images.

The first order of business for Oren Semiconductor, which will be based in the Yoqne'am, Israel, will be to market its newest single-chip "ghost canceler" ICs, which combine DSP and filtering technology to reconstruct and restore TV images distorted by reflected TV signals.

Oren represents the consummation of an earlier agreement between the Zoran and Goldtron in which Goldtron's Dynamar subsidiary served as distributor for Zoran's ghost IC products in Southeast Asia (EN, April 24). Under the new company, Dynamar will extend its distribution reach to all of Asia, while Oren sets up its own direct sales forces in the U.S. and Europe, said Spencer Horowitz, Oren's marketing director.

Oren declined to disclose how much was spent to finance the new company and would not discuss how Zoran and Goldtron are divvying their joint ownership.

The management team will be headed by Dr. Levy Gerzberg, president and CEO of Zoran, and TC Pang, group managing director of Dynamar, both of whom will serve as co-presidents. The general manager, engineering and marketing departments will be made up of former Zoran personnel.

By focusing on the worldwide television market, Oren hopes its sales of ghost canceler ICs will exceed "millions" of units annually. Oren estimates that more than 100 million televisions are sold every year, and more than one-third are sold in countries that already have ghost canceler reference standards in place.

"Even if we get only a portion of that, we're still talking about a fairly large company," Mr. Horowitz said.

Oren is wagering that ghost canceling ICs will become a popular feature for TVs with 26-inch screens and above, offering a digital solution for the multiple images caused by transmission signals reflecting off large buildings or mountains.

The OR43100 compares the incoming Ghost Canceler Reference signal to a pristine copy stored in memory, reconstructs the image using an adaptive equalizer DSP engine and then routes the signal to 567-tap digital filter. The device interfaces with an analog IC that performs digital-to-analog conversion and an analog-to-digital converter chip.

The digital filter is programmable, which allows OEMs to adapt their solution to whatever GCR signal is used in the country it is sold. No user programming is required for the embedded ghost canceler algorithms, which are suitable for all international GCR standards.

"The filter is the heart of the chip," Mr. Horowitz said. "(Zoran) was already a leader in the digital filtering market and we are now applying it to ghost canceling." Oren has three patents covering the ghost canceler IC relating to its DSP and digital filtering technology, he added.

Oren, a fabless company, will manufacture the 0.6-micron CMOS devices through contracts with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Israel-based Tower Semiconductor, Mr. Horowitz said.

Much of the groundwork has been laid to support the deployment of the technology. Countries that have adopted the Philips-developed GCR signal are the U.S., Japan, Canada, Taiwan, Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand. Singapore, UK, Venezuela and Chile are now evaluating or are in the final stages of adopting the standard.

Also, Tektronix, Leitch and Ultech are offering inserters with EpROMs provided by Philips that include the GCR code. Philips is garnering royalty payments from OEMS who develop systems that decode the GCR signal, Mr. Horowitz said.

The solution can be embedded into the TV itself, designed into its own set-top box, sit between VCR with tuner and TV or integrated into the VCR. Oren's first customer will be Philips Consumer Electronics Co., which will incorporate the devices into its Magnavoxbrand ImageLock ghost canceler systems and TVs.

Follow-on products from Oren will aim at digital echo cancellation for digital cable, HDTV, SDTV and devices that demodulate QAM and VSB standards using technology closely tied to ghost canceliation. "This technology is the vehicle by which we will have low cost video demodulation," Mr. Horowitz said.

Slated to cost less than $25 in 100,000 quantities, the OR43100 solution will allow a bill of materials cost of less than $100, translating into an after market set-top box cost of about $150, Mr. Horowitz said.

Samples of the OR43100 are available now, with production quantities set to begin shipping in 4Q. The 3.3-Volt device is packaged in a 64-pin plastic shrink DIP.

Mitsubishi, meanwhile, has developed for the new Oren adaptive filter a pre-processor IC which performs digital-to-analog conversion and synchronization processing of baseband video signals. Along with a separate 8- or 9-bit standard analog-to-digital converter, the mixed-signal pre-processor and adaptive filter provide a complete ghost cancellation solution.

The M52661SP ghost cancellation mixed-signal interface contains a burst-lock, lock generating circuit, synchronous separating circuit, clamping circuit for digital signal processing, an analog video switch and a 10-bit DAC. It also features a time-base error-detection circuit to spot a channel change or VCR signal.