ATI begins sampling HDTV chip

Inside digital tellies soon

By Tony Smith • Get more from this author

Posted in Personal, 2nd December 2003 14:50 GMT

Free research: Application platforms, the state of play

ATI has launched its latest picture processing chip aimed at the US HDTV market.

The Theater 313 is being pitched at makers of set-top boxes, digital TVs and PC TV add-in cards, and can handle both cable-transmitted and terrestrial-broadcast digital content that meets the Digital Cable Ready and Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) specifications. It can also cope with analog NTSC signals.

ATI was particularly keen to stress the chip's signal enhancement technologies, which improve playback in high-interference environments. For the more technical and for jargon buffs, the 313 "incorporates a universal QPSK (Quadrature Phase Shift Keying) forward data channel (FDC) receiver and a BTSC/Dual FM demodulator and decoder", ATI said. The can "operate in either the ITU-J.83B/SCTE DVS-031 compliant 64 QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) or 256 QAM modes used by digital cable systems, the NTSC analog system, or the ATSC compliant 8VSB (vestigal sideband) mode used in digital terrestrial broadcasting. For digitally modulated input signals (QAM or 8VSB)."

ATI is sampling the 313 now. ®

Free research: Application platforms, the state of play