In order to meet the growing global demand for accessing digital terrestrial television services, STMicroelectronics NV (STM) recently introduced a single-chip DVB-T silicon tuner that enables manufacturers to simplify product assembly and supply-chain management.

As consumers switch from analog to digital television broadcasting, the demand for digital set-top boxes and integrated digital televisions (iDTVs) is on the rise. This transition has already taken place in nine countries, including the USA, parts of Europe and Scandinavia, and is underway in other nations.

With its STV4100, the company offers complete chipsets for digital-terrestrial receivers, including the tuner and a choice of demodulators, MPEG decoders and combined demodulator/decoder ICs.

Silicon tuners are replacing those supplied by third-party providers, which combine multiple discrete components in a metal enclosure and must be individually adjusted for optimum performance. STMicroelectronics’ new device saves up to 30 separate components, has a compact QFN 5 x 5mm footprint and needs no adjustment. Moreover, operation on only 600mA of electricity helps to minimize power consumption of products like set-top boxes, iDTVs, PC-TV receivers, and DVD or Blu-ray recorders.

The STV4100 is in production and is priced at $1.80 in quantities of 10,000 units. STMicroelectronics also announced the general availability of PGI Visual Fortran (PVF) Release 9.0 for Windows workstations, servers and clusters. PVF 9.0 is the first product that supports building, launching and debugging of Microsoft MPI (MSMPI) Fortran applications within the Microsoft Visual Studio integrated development environment.

Based in Geneva, Switzerland, STMicroelectronics is a global independent semiconductor company. It designs, develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) and discrete devices. These gadgets are used in a wide variety of microelectronic applications, including telecommunication systems, computer systems, consumer products, automotive products, industrial automation and control systems. Its major competitors are Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN) and Infineon Technologies.

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