Digital TV route cloudy for semi makers

Electronic News, April 7, 1997 by Sarah Cohen

The FCC's decision to some degree clears the road ahead for broadcasters, relieving the expense of purchasing a second station while broadcasters continue to make equipment investments in digital technology. But the future of DTV, and DTV's subset, high-definition television (HDTV), is still murky for those who purchase or produce semiconductors, as the industry sorts out a muddle of issues related to how the digital transmission will be deployed, which digital standards will dominate the marketplace, and how long analog signals will remain viable.

Zenith Electronics Corp. last week disclosed that Korea's LG Semicon--the IC affiliate of Zenith's majority shareholder, LG Electronics--has ready what they believe are the first semiconductors for the HDTV system. It's been reported that Zenith is in discussions with chip manufacturers to license the technology (see story, this page).

But other semiconductor manufacturers are hesitant to develop DTV or HDTV chips when they're uncertain how long analog functionality will remain a necessity inside televisions and set-top boxes--when a compromise has yet to be reached between the television manufacturers' preferred interlacing standard and the PC manufacturers' preferred progressive standard--and when chip manufacturers are uncertain if, in addition to terrestrial signal decoding capacity, it would be cost-effective to add decoding capacity for cable and satellite signals.

Roger Kozlowski, VP and technical director of multimedia systems for Motorola, told Electronic News, "The reality is none of us are ready. It would be premature and speculative for us to build a chipset in a vacuum." Mr. Kozlowski said the complexity of the silicon, at least from Motorola's perspective, was not an issue--merely design the chipset around the terrestrial standard set in place by the Grand Alliance, a consumer electronics group devoted to developing an HDTV standard (EN, Dec. 2, 1996), and start from there. "The standard is very clear. It has nothing to do with cable or satellite."

But John Sixsmith, IBM's set-top box marketing manager, disagrees with Mr. Kozlowski and suggested that IBM considers the plethora of standards and digital transmission approaches a serious factor in determining success in the marketplace and expense to the chip manufacturer. "Will the move to cable be via satellite, via cable, via wireless system technology or via Bell operating companies? The requirements for all these technologies are not the same and affect certain parts of the set-top box and not others." And then there's the issue of the dual broadcast. "Will those investing in HDTV still have to grandfather back to analog (as consumers and the industry make the digital transition) and for how long? That sort of thing will get expensive."

Mr. Sixsmith believes that TV manufacturers are looking for programmable devices, "but programming chips take longer to develop and create more chances of software problems," said Mr. Sixsmith.

Under the FCC's order, analog signals will no longer be broadcast after 2006. Fifty-three percent of households are expected to receive DTV and HDTV on three TV stations by 1999, and digital television sets themselves are expected to be on shelves by the end of 1998 and to sell for between $2,000 to $5,000.