Analog/Digital TV Tuner Chip is suited for portable devices.December 11, 2006 -
MicroTuner(TM) MT2130 allows users to watch analog/digital TV across cable or off-air broadcasts. Engineered to receive weak signals, chip deploys ClearTune filtering technology to minimize noise and distortion. Support is offered for multiple TV transmission standards such as ATSC, QAM, DVB-T, ISDB-T, DMB-T, NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. Measuring ¼ in., chip fits into very small designs, and can be configured in multi-tuner architectures.
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Original Press release
Microtune, Inc.
2201 10th Street
Plano, TX, 75074
USA
Microtune Unveils New Lower-Power, High-Performance Analog/Digital TV Tuner for Portable Devices
Microtune's New Tuner Chip Brings Superior Analog/Digital TV Performance to PC Notebooks, USB Tuner Sticks, Portable TVs and DVD Players, and Other Power-Sensitive Devices
PLANO, Texas -- Expanding its portfolio of products for the emerging portable digital TV market, Microtune®, Inc. (NASDAQ:TUNE) today announced a new tuner chip that brings quality digital TV to PC notebooks, portable TVs, tuner sticks, portable DVD players and other small devices that demand both high performance and lower power. Called the MicroTuner(TM) MT2130, the new tuner, when integrated into portable consumer products, allows users to watch analog and digital TV across cable or off-air broadcasts, to time-shift programs and to capture video for multimedia applications.
The market leader in single-chip silicon TV tuner technology, Microtune develops radio frequency (RF) silicon and systems products targeted to digital TVs, set-top boxes, cable modems and telephony modems, PC-TV products, car entertainment systems and mobile TV devices. With more than 42 million TV tuner chips sold worldwide, Microtune technology is both customer-hardened and market-proven. It is backed by high-volume manufacturing and worldwide engineering and application support services.
"The worldwide transition to digital television is increasingly spanning a widening range of consumer electronics and peripherals," said James A. Fontaine, Microtune's President and CEO. "Our new MT2130 leverages the superior engineering, excellent performance and reliability that have come to characterize Microtune tuners, and it adapts our market-proven RF technology for new classes of power-sensitive digital TV devices. By deploying the MT2130 chip, our customers can differentiate their portable products by offering superior TV reception across the analog and digital broadcasts that exist today."
Microtune's new MT2130 is based on the architecture of the company's very high-performance three-in-one tuner -- the MT2131 analog/digital/cable tuner, the only silicon TV tuner engineered to meet and exceed the U.S. digital receiver performance parameters of the ATSC standard. The MT2130 offers the dramatic integration, broad-based functionality and reduced bill-of-materials advantages of the MT2131, but with 20% lower power.
Based on its real-world experience with mobile and PC-TV tuner applications, Microtune designed the MT2130 to meet the specific RF technical requirements of power-sensitive, space-constrained products. First, the MT2130 is engineered with excellent sensitivity to receive weak signals and to compensate for the small, built-in antennas typical of portable products. Like its MT2131 predecessor, the MT2130 exceeds, by a wide margin, the sensitivity-measurement tests published by the FCC this past December in its study of a large group of retail DTV receivers1. For the consumer, the chip's superior sensitivity translates directly into uncompromised picture quality.
Second, the MT2130 deploys Microtune's unique ClearTune filtering technology to improve channel reception. Television bands worldwide are becoming increasingly congested with the simulcasting of legacy analog transmissions and new digital channels. Competing or undesired adjacent channels are now frequently encountered, causing disruption to both analog and digital signals. Microtune's patent-pending ClearTune technology, built into the MT2130, provides significant immunity to these interfering signals. From a consumer perspective, the MT2130 tuner is engineered to minimize noise and distortion for consistent, stable picture quality.
The MT2130 tuner packs the functionality of three tuners (analog, digital terrestrial, cable) into a miniature device, eliminating numerous external components for a very cost-effective design. The chip supports multiple TV transmission standards (ATSC, QAM, DVB-T, ISDB-T, DMB-T, NTSC, PAL and SECAM). As a result, it permits manufacturers to deploy the same tuner on multiple platforms, gaining economies of scale, while providing a single solution that cost-effectively bridges the multiple analog and digital TV standards that co-exist today.
At a mere ¼-inches in size, the MT2130 chip fits into very small designs, such as dongle or flash-stick packages, and can be easily configured in multi-tuner architectures. Multi-tuner architectures enable diversity applications and permit users to enable 'watch and record' two or more channels simultaneously.
Additional technical information about the MT2130 tuner is available at: http://microtune.com.
PRICE AND AVAILABILITY
The MT2130 tuner is sampling now to select customers and is priced at less than $3.00 in volume quantities. To simplify evaluation and design for qualified customers, Microtune offers Evaluation Boards.
ABOUT MICROTUNE
Microtune, Inc. is a silicon and subsystems company that designs and markets radio frequency (RF) solutions for the worldwide broadband communications and transportation electronics markets. Inventor of the MicroTuner(TM) single-chip broadband tuner, Microtune offers a portfolio of advanced tuner, amplifier, and upconverter products that enable the delivery of information and entertainment across new classes of consumer electronics devices. The Company currently holds 66 U.S. patents for its technology. Founded in 1996, Microtune is headquartered in Plano, Texas, with key design and sales centers located around the world. The website is microtune.com.
(1) FCC Test Reference: Sensitivity measurements based on mean receiver sensitivities reported by FCC, December 2005, ET Docket 05-182NTSC:
The FCC report is available online at www.fcc.gov
Acronyms for the various analog and digital standards are:
NTSC: National Television Systems Committee
ATSC: Advanced Television Systems Committee
DVB-T: Digital Video Broadcasting - Terrestrial
DMB-T: Digital Multimedia Broadcast - Terrestrial
PAL: Phase-Alternating Line
SECAM: Sequentiel couleur memoire (French for "sequential color with memory")
QAM: Quadrature amplitude modulation
CONTACTS
Microtune, Inc.
Kathleen Padula, 972-673-1811 (Media)
kathleen.padula@microtune.com
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