Microtune's Tuner Enables High-Performance Mobile TV on LG Electronics' New DVB-H Phone
Plano, TX, May 16, 2006- Microtune®, Inc. (NASDAQ:TUNE) today announced that LG Electronics, Inc. (LG) has selected Microtune's ultra low-power Mobile MicroTuner(TM) chip to enable high-performance mobile television on LG's LG-U900 DVB-H mobile phone.
LG Electronics, South Korea's second-largest electronics manufacturer, plans to supply the phone to Italian mobile telecommunications service provider, Hutchison 3 Italia. Beginning in June, Hutchison expects to broadcast the FIFA World Cup games to mobile handheld devices using the digital video broadcast handheld (DVB-H) standard. LG announced the launch of the LG-U900, the world's first commercially available UMTS (WCDMA) DVB-H phone, at a ceremony in Rome, Italy on April 27, 2006. Previously, the LG-U900 mobile phone was previewed in LG's stand at the giant CeBIT fair in Hannover, Germany and was successfully demonstrated in Milan, Italy.
"As a supplier that specializes in tuners deployed today across leading stand-alone and portable devices, we understand the unique challenges of delivering a quality TV picture in a mobile environment," said James A. Fontaine, President and CEO of Microtune. "We are pleased to be working with and supporting LG as it brings the first commercial DVB-H mobile phones to market."
"To compete in the European market, home to worldwide European mobile phone manufacturers, we developed our DVB-H mobile phone to deliver superior quality and reliability," said Dr. Skott Ahn, Executive Vice President, LG Electronics. "The TV tuner is a key electronics component in ensuring excellent TV performance. We are very pleased to be the world's first UMTS (WCDMA) DVB-H phone manufacturer deploying Microtune's market-proven RF technology."
Mobile MicroTuner Technology
In the LG-U900 mobile phone, LG deploys Microtune's Mobile MicroTuner MT2260 chip, a miniature DVB-H digital TV tuner engineered to deliver robust performance in a very low-power mobile environment.
Designed with a patent-pending and proprietary architecture and Microtune's unique ClearTune filtering technology, the Mobile MicroTuner MT2260 features higher integration than other leading DVB-H tuner solutions on the market by not requiring bulky and costly external components, such as a low-noise amplifier and transformer.
"We pride ourselves on being the performance leader in silicon TV tuner technology," added Fontaine. "To ensure true quality of reception for DVB-H devices, we designed our Mobile MicroTuner to exceed the MBRAI performance specification. With our vast experience developing tuners that detect very small signals and simultaneously manage fading conditions, 0dB echos and large adjacent channels, we believe that the MBRAI specification is, at best, a bare minimum requirement for acceptable DVB-H TV reception."
"As with our recently introduced 3-in-1 MT2131 digital TV tuner, we understand the importance of driving performance beyond the specifications to deliver a superior user experience in real-world environments. Performance beyond the MBRAI specification helps to ensure the reception of continuous TV services under marginal reception conditions, while providing superior manufacturing yield to handset makers."
Microtune recently announced that its Mobile MicroTuner technology will be available both as tuner chips and as a wafer-level chip-scale package. This chip-scale packaged tuner allows for cost-effective integration of the Mobile MicroTuner with a demodulator, filter or other componentry in a system-in-package (SiP), a solution that enables greater miniaturization in the next generations of mobile TV products.
MBRAI Specification
The Mobile and Portable DVB-T Radio Access Interface Specification (MBRAI) is the DVB-H radio specification defined by the DVB Project, and it identifies the minimum performance condition within which the radio must operate to ensure conformance to the DVB-H standard.
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 60 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 www.microtune.com .
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