Will China's DTV standard eclipse its mobile TV spec?

Legend Silicon, (Fremont, Calif.), a fabless chip company, is rolling out three new digital TV chips based on China's terrestrial digital television broadcast standard called GB20600-2006.

All three chips, essentially terrestrial digital TV demodulation ICs integrated with memory and A-to-D converters, are designed for use in everything from fixed TV, set-tops to portable devices -- to be viewed on a train or a bus -- and mobile phones, according to Ben Runyan, vice president of marketing at Legend Silicon.

Unlike U.S. digital TV standard ATSC, originally designed only for viewing on a fixed TV at home in mind, China is touting that its GB20600-2006 standard is a terrestrial digital TV standard developed for both fixed TV and handheld devices.

The GB20600-2006 standard was formerly known as DMB-T/H (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting Terrestrial/Handheld).

Some observers call China's GB20600 standard "an ultimate compromise" of two competing standards -- one developed by Tsinghua University in Beijing and another by Jiaotong University in Shanghai. The new spec is viewed as the co-existence of two separate standards, rather than a single standard integrating both approaches.

Tsinghua's system TDS-OFDM (Time Domain Synchronous OFDM) uses multicarriers just like DVB-T and Japan's ISDB-T. Meanwhile, Jiatong's ADTB-T (Advanced Digital Television Broadcast Terrestrial) is a single carrier vestigial sideband system based on the US 8-VSB standard.

Legend Silicon, with strong ties to Tsinghua University, provided the brains behind TDS-OFDM development.

Legend Silicon noted that the new chips are the company's 8th generation DTV demodulator compliant to China's terrestrial DTV standard.