Broadcom Enters Mobile TV Chip Market

Broadcom announced yesterday the BCM2940, a 65 nanometer mobile TV receiver chip which combines a dual-mode demodulator and tuner, and supports both DVB-H and DVB-T. Broadcom claims that the chip reduces power consumption by up to 40% and footprint by up to 30% compared to current solutions.

This is Broadcom's first offering to the mobile TV chip market, which is already dominated by several players including DiBcom, Siano, TI, ADI, Qualcomm, Newport Media and others.

Mobile TV Chipset Prices Fall Below $10

According to a new market research report published by ABI Research, the price of Mobile TV chipsets from several vendors has fallen below the $10 price point, enabling the technology to gain serious traction in the high-end and smart phone handset segments by early 2007. ABI Research expect the price to fall below $5 in the next few years, enabling mass market adoption of the technology following its integration in mid-tier handsets. According to the report, the major handset semiconductor vendors such as TI, Freescale and Analog devices have the full handset system knowledge which is required for integrating the mobile TV function, while newcomers such as DibCom, Frontier Silicon and Siano Mobile have the advantage of focusing exclusively mobile TV technologies. Siano Mobile recently announced a joint reference design with Intel for mobile TV enabled 3G handsets, using the Xscale-based "Mohanas" application processor.

DVB-H and T-DMB Chip Vendors Reach One Million Mark

In two separate announcements this week, DibCom claimed that it had shipped over 1 million DVB-H chips, and Frontier Silicon announced shipment of 1 million T-DMB chips. The chips are powering handsets by Samsung and LG used in the initial launches of T-DMB in Korea, Germany and China, and DVB-H in Italy and Finland. This significant milestone marks the beginning of the early market phase for Mobile TV adoption, which according to several industry estimates is expected to reach over 1 million subscribers this year, and over 100 million subscribers by 2010.

Qualcomm Introduces Multi-Standard Mobile TV Receiver

Qualcomm announced today that it is developing a mobile broadcast TV receiver chip that will support DVB-H, ISDB-T and MediaFlo. Samples of the chip, called UBM (Universal Broadcast Modem), will be available in the first quarter of 2007.

This is the first announcement of a mobile TV receiver chip that will support 3 completely different standards. Siano Mobile Silicon announced yesterday at Computex Taiwan that its SMS1000 mobile TV receiver chipset is the world's first solution which supports DVB-T, DVB-H, T-DMB and DAB-IP, and is already in production. Frontier Silicon, which currently has DAB and T-DMB chips available, announced that its Paradiso FS1030 chip will support both T-DMB and DVB-H, but did not announce when it will be available. TI, on the other hand, has two separate versions of its Hollywood mobile TV receiver: DTV 1000 for DVB-H, and DTV 1001 for ISDB-T.

The variety of standards for mobile TV seems like a market reality, with no clear winner in the next few years. While some standards are geographically focused (such as ISDB-T in Japan and S-DMB in Korea), others will be implemented globably, and in some cases two or more standards will be implemented in a single country. For example, the UK will have both DAB-IP and DVB-H, Germany will have both DVB-H and T-DMB, and the USA will have both DVB-H and MediaFlo. The global fragmentation of mobile TV standards will ultimately lead to strong demand for multi-standard mobile TV receiver chipsets.

Mobile TV Chip Roundup

The CTIA Wireless show this week has prompted a series of announcements regarding mobile TV products, including several updates on the chip front. TI has demonstrated their "Holywood" DTV-1000 single-chip demodulator/tuner on Modeo's DVB-H network, coupled with the OMAP 2420 application processor running PacketVideo's Windows Media codecs and DRM, and S3's DVB-H protocol stack. Philips introduced the rival BGT216 DVB-H module, which measures just 7x7 mm and will be available in early 2007. ADI announced a few T-DMB design wins in Korea, running the T-DMB demodulation processing on a Blackfin DSP. And mobile TV chip vendor Siano Mobile Silicon announced the completion of its $23M financing round, lead by Bessemer Venture Partners .

Modeo Demonstrates Custom DVB-H Handset at CTIA Wireless

US mobile TV service provider Modeo is demonstrating its DVB-H technology at CTIA Wireless this week using a Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone, which was custom-designed for the company by Taiwanese ODM HTC. The handset includes a TI OMAP 850 integrated baseband/application processor, an NVIDIA Go-Force 5500 multimedia and graphics processor, a DibCom DVB-H demodulator and a Microtune MT220 DVB-H tuner. The handset receives DVB-H broadcasts using the Windows Media Video and Windows Media Audio codecs, and utilizes Microsoft's DRM.

Qualcomm Developing DVB-H Chips

According to a report by Reuters, Qualcomm is developing mobile TV receiver chips which support the DVB-H standard, which directly competes with Qualcomm's own MediaFlo technology. Qualcomm's CEO Paul Jacobs said in a Reuters technology conference on Monday that "it would be in Qualcomm's interest to make chips for DVB-H ... because the success of this standard could boost the uptake of wireless TV in general".

3GSM 2006 Mobile TV Update - Part 2

The stream of mobile TV announcements at 3GSM 2006 in Barcelona continues, with Nortel announcing its mobile TV solutions over HSDPA, MBMS and DVB-H networks. T-DMB keeps gaining momentum in Europe, with Samsung announcing that it is working with Bouygues Telecom, TF1 and VDL on a T-DMB trial in France that will start at the end of this month. Samsung is not betting on T-DMB alone: At 3GSM, Samsung is demonstrating 7 different Mobile TV handset models, supporting various combinations of T-DMB, S-DMB, DVB-H and MediaFlo. Samsung also surprised the mobile TV chip industry with an Announcement of its own DVB-H front-end solution, comprising of an RF CMOS tuner chip and a DVB-H Channel decoder which also support DVB-T.

While Samsung is a new player in DVB-H chips, DiBcom which is one of the more established players announced a joint reference design with NDS which implements Conditional Access for DVB-H receivers, complaint with the DVB CBMS standard. And still on the mobile TV chip front, Philips introduced the new version of their DVB-H receiver chip, which includes a tuner and a demodulator in a 7x7 mm package.

If we didn't have enough mobile TV standards already, Alcatel is proposing a combination of satellite-based and terrestrial-based DVB-H mobile TV broadcasting in the S-band, which is supposed to enable re-use of existing 3G base stations, and solve the frequency allocation problems of DVB-H in Europe. Interesting concept technically, but pulling together the whole value chain to support it (satellite operators, handset vendors, other network equipment vendors) will be quite difficult.

Stay tuned for more mobile TV news from 3GSM 2006...

Mobile TV Chip Market Heating Up

There is definitely increased activity in the market for chips that support the various mobile TV standards, with Frontier Silicon announcing its Kino-2 chip which supports T-DMB and DAB, and Newport Media raising $25M from investors to develop a mobile TV receiver that will support T-DMB, DVB-H, ISDB-T and MediaFlo. This follows two other annoucements this week: DibCom's chairman disclosing that Cingular is evaluating products based on its chip for use in the US market, and Microtune announcing that it is starting to ship a DVB-H tuner. Also check out the CommsDesign article published today which discusses the conformance of the various DVB-H chips to the MBRAI specs, and if you read hebrew, there were an article published in The Marker last week about DVB-H chip vendor Siano Mobile Silicon, including an interview with their CEO Alon Ironi.

Expect a lot more to come next week during 3GSM in Barcelona - I will keep you posted...

ATI Announces DVB-H Chip

ATI has been offering 3D graphics and video chips for mobile devices for the past few years, and had some significant design wins with Motorola, Samsung, LG and Siemens/BenQ. ATI also licensed its mobile 3D graphics engine to Qualcomm, which integrated it into baseband chips. But now, the company is placing its bets on the mobile TV market. In an article published by CommsDesign yesterday, ATI stated: "We have been pushing 3-D for handsets, but it will take a while longer. Meanwhile, mobile TV seems to be moving ahead faster in cell phones".

In addition to upgrading its multimedia chip to support H.264 decoding at 30 frames per second, the company has also developed its own DVB-H demodulator. ATI claims that a 12 x 12-mm module which includes this demodulator and a 3rd-party tuner will consume 100 mW on average, and cost $10 in volume.