Majority of New HDTVs Powered By ATI

ATI announced today that the vast majority of commercially available integrated Digital Cable Ready (DCR) High Definition Televisions use ATI’s NXT2003. The NXT2003 is the industry’s first single chip off-air DTV and unidirectional cable receiver. DCR HDTV sets are rigorously tested to insure quality operation. Eleven consumer electronic companies have announced digital cable certified HDTV sets. Of these, nine rely on ATI’s NXT series components for reliable high performance reception: Panasonic, Samsung, Toshiba, Hitachi, Sony, Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, Inc., Thomson, Inc., Sharp, and another major manufacturer yet to be announced.

Digital televisions that have the “Digital Cable Ready” (DCR) label conform to the United States’ Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules and regulations that guarantee the TV will be able to receive digital programming from the majority of cable providers within the United States. A DCR television can be plugged directly into the cable system and receive analog and most digital services without the need for a separate set-top box. A CableCard, supplied by the local cable company, is plugged into the television to enable digital cable service.

“ATI is proud to enable and facilitate the DTV transition,” said Mike Gittings, Director of Marketing, DTV Products, ATI Technologies Inc. “Through vision and innovation, ATI is delivering the quality components that our customers demand. The NXT2003/4/5 product family provide the key technologies that enabled manufacturers to develop HDTV sets that comply with the FCC Tuner mandate and Cable Plug and Play Agreement. They also provide seamless migration for the bidirectional cable specifications and requirements.”

The NXT2003 is a member of a trio of high performance integrated circuits that were the first to combine digital terrestrial reception and cable compatibility on a single chip. The NXT2004 VSB/QAM Receiver (vestigial side band/quadrature amplitude modulation) is designed for a variety of applications including off-air and digital cable television receivers, set-top boxes, PCDTV and datacast applications where cost, low power and industry leading performance are a must.

The NXT2004 VSB/QAM Demodulator is configurable to work in either the ATSC compliant 8 VSB mode for terrestrial broadcasting or in the ITU-J.83B/SCTE DVS-031 compliant 64 QAM or 256 QAM modes. The NXT2003 includes all of the functionality of the NXT2004 and adds a QPSK receiver for receiving the Forward Data Channel, required for unidirectional cable operation. The NXT2005 DTV Cable Transceiver and Terrestrial Receiver is capable of receiving VSB off-air signals and performing the bi-directional cable reception and transmission formats required by the emerging bi-directional cable TV standards.