New 1Seg Digital TV Tuner Chip
MaxLinear has announced sampling availability of their new MxL7001 IC for mobile TV at 1/10th the packaged area of their MxL5000-family which set the previous record for size. The tuner supports both ISDB-T 1-segment and 3-segment applications and will be available in production quantities early summer 2007. According to the press release, several OEMs are in the latter stages of developing MxL7001 based products to be launched this summer.
“Handsets will not get bigger just to support broadcast TV. They don’t have to, thanks to this new family of silicon tuners that leverage digital CMOS process technology. By employing our novel radio architecture, MxL7001 sets altogether new size, power consumption, and performance norms,” said Kishore Seendripu, MaxLinear’s CEO and President. “The first market for the MxL7001 tuner is Japan, which is the only mobile television market with significant volume today and also experiencing rapid growth.”
The MxL7001 is a key component in several handset designs targeted at the Japanese mobile television market, which analysts estimate will grow to 20-30 million units in the next 12 months. This market will expand beyond Japan into other countries like Brazil, where a variant of ISDB-T has been adopted as the standard for both mobile and fixed terrestrial digital television transmissions. Future product extensions of MxL7001 will support other mobile television standards like DVB-H.