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Philips Targets LCD BOM
Online staff -- Electronic News, 3/6/2006
Royal Philips Electronics is targeting the bill-of-materials in high-definition LCD TVs, today introducing a hybrid Nexperia TV520 reference design that allows TV makers to reach a BOM of less than $45 for the required analog and digital processing functionality.
According to Philips, the customer can design a product and bring it to market in as little as three months with this production-ready design because of its hybrid ATSC/DVB that translates into a reduced bill of materials of up to 50 percent compared to alternative solutions.
In addition, the new reference design is one that can be used for end-devices that target all segments of the market, according to Jurgen Krehnke, senior director of marketing for the Americas for Royal Philips Electronics.
"The TV520 is a solution customizable in different levels," he said. "We have a family of products that are easily adapted to low, mid or high end of market so that we are addressing entire consumer market." For higher end solutions, OEMs would add a booster chip for additional computational algorithms. And for the low end the existing chip would stand alone.
The new reference design supports both analog and digital TV broadcast standards and aims to meet the rapidly growing demand for convincing High Definition picture quality and great sound experience on small screen LCD TV sets at an unprecedented price point, the company boasted.
“The LCD TV market is seeing greater than 20 percent price erosion per year, which means that manufacturers must be vigilant in removing cost from their products almost as soon as they hit the market. At the same time, regulations like the U.S. FCC mandate requiring all TVs to be digital by February 2007 means that TV makers must also have their new digital TVs ready for the Christmas season 2006, with a short time to market and the latest picture quality technologies that consumers expect from a new LCD TV,” said Paul O’Donovan, principal analyst, Gartner, in a statement. “If you put these two driving forces together it is clear that system solutions which lower costs and add features in a short timeframe, are extremely well-suited to this environment.”
The first two members of the TV520 reference design family are the TV520/20 and the TV520/30. The TV520/20 reference design was developed for mainstream LCD displays, but is supplemented by the TV520/30, which allows set makers to offer further picture quality enhancements, Philips said, adding that all members of the family are pin-to-pin compatible. The TV520/20 system solution also includes a field-proven ATSC software stack and customization tools.
The TV520 reference design is built on the Nexperia Home PNX853X media processor, which provides the IP blocks for MPEG de-multiplexing and decoding, video scaling, de-interlacing, noise reduction, video rendering, audio decoding, digital to analog conversion and audio featuring. It also contains a High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) and an SD/HD analog component input. The TV520 is also scalable to higher-end TV solutions by adding a variety of Philips companion processors.
