Leading TV manufacturers choose ST’s set-top-box technologies for feature-rich standard- and high-definition MPEG-2 and H.264 integrated digital TV sets
STMicroelectronics has confirmed its leadership position for the shipment of MPEG-2 and H.264 decoder chips for use in integrated Digital TV sets (iDTVs) for the European market. These iDTVs are TV sets that integrate a digital TV receiver, and are today primarily aimed at the digital terrestrial broadcast market.
In 2007, ST again increased its MPEG-2 market share shipping 10 million decoders, primarily from its STi510x family, for use in iDTV applications, measured against a total European market of 12 million iDTV sets. The 2007 totals compare with 3.1 million decoders shipped by ST, and 5.2 million integrated TV sets sold in Europe in 2006.
LCD TV sales are growing rapidly towards market domination, especially in Europe, as display prices fall. Sales of integrated digital TVs, increasingly popular with consumers because of their convenience, are further encouraged by the planned analog switch-off across Europe, and mandates such as the French requirement that all TV sets should integrate a digital decoder by March 2008.
Additionally, early adoption of the H.264 standard – also known as AVC (Advanced Video Coding) and MPEG-4 Part 10 – as the European high-definition (HD) standard has gained added impetus from a French ruling that by December 2008, all ‘HD-Ready’ TV sets sold in France must integrate a high-definition decoder.
Leading TV manufacturers are now capitalizing on the proven capability of ST’s H.264 decoding technology – with its widespread use in both high-definition and standard-definition set-top boxes – when designing new iDTV products, or adding H.264 capability to their existing platforms. The rich feature set and embedded connectivity of ST’s STi710x high-definition H.264 decoder family enables the later enhancement of H.264 TV set platforms with built-in features such as DLNA 1.5 compliant Digital Media Players, IPTV (Internet Protocol TV), or DVRs (Digital Video Recorders), as well as simplifying the addition of hard-disk drives, image sources and network capabilities. The family also includes a dedicated 24-bit digital-video output to gluelessly connect to market-leading analog TV scalers.
About H.264
The H.264/AVC standard is an ultra-efficient, fully scalable video technology that produces high quality video at lower data rates than other solutions, and can be used in applications from HDTV and DVD to 3G (third generation) mobile phones. Services broadcast using H.264 use considerably less bandwidth than the widely used MPEG-2 coding scheme, and at a much lower bitrate, allowing broadcasters economically to transmit more high definition programming. Compression efficiency is improved by more than 50%.
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