News From Inside The Industry

There are many potential PCTV solutions for notebook and other portable computers, but these usually involve costly hardware or USB devices that can be very obtrusive. Mirics Semiconductor and their FlexiTV receiver look to change all that, offering a standard RF tuner for reception of all global analog and digital broadcast standards (FM, DVB-T, ATSC, DTMB). Mirics is looking for the FlexiTV to be a standard in future notebook designs, utilizing a low-cost PCTV MiniCard format, and potentially, straight on the motherboard.

The Mirics FlexiTV silicon performs the multi-band RF tuning and digital interfacing to the host, with the MSi2500 integrating analog to digital conversion, and the MSi001 handling digital signal processing, all combined with a control host and standard High Speed USB2.0 connectivity. Mirics implements software demodulation on the host processor, which may put a bit of strain on the CPU, but also allows nomadic tuner reception without the need for multiple silicon-based demodulators. This will offer users a potential software upgrade plan, as well as future-proofing against broadcast standards change. "Mirics FlexiTV enables a truly flexible processor-based solution for PC mini-cards, dongles and ultimately motherboards, supporting reception of global TV and radio whilst simultaneously reducing the cost and size challenges of supporting multi-standard reception," stated Simon Atkinson, CEO, Mirics. The Mirics FlexiTV solution is priced at $3 in volume, and according to the company, adds a sub-$5 bill of materials (BOM) for a complete PCTV MiniCard.