Mirics, Spreadtrum launch TV-on-PC mini-card

The development is one of the results of a partnership between Mirics (Fleet, England) and Spreadtrum (Shanghai, China) announced in December 2008.

Miric said the card is available for system integrators and computer builders but did not indicate a price.

CMMB is the mobile TV technology backed by China's State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). With coverage extending to 150 cities already, SARFT expects CMMB to be supported in 337 Chinese cities by the end of 2009, and have a total population coverage of 500 million by 2011. Multimedia enhanced portable computers, such as netbooks, are suitable for receiving the live TV and radio content and data services that CMMB supports, Mirics said.

The PCTV card measures 30-mm by 26.8-mm, and has been implemented in the half mini-card format. The mini-card integrates Mirics' MSi002 FlexiRF silicon tuner and Spreadtrum's SC6600V CMMB demodulator system-on-chip. The card supports conditional access, and has been optimized for BlazeVideo's DTV video player.

"As consumers increasingly turn towards netbook PCs as their prime device for multimedia content consumption, CMMB is the ideal technology to deliver live content to such portable platforms," said Simon Atkinson, CEO of Mirics, in a statement. "With the announcement of this half mini-card solution, manufacturers can now very simply embed broadcast TV into portable PCs."

Leo Li, president and CEO of Spreadtrum said: "In the short elapsed time since Spreadtrum and Mirics announced a strategic PCTV collaboration, the two companies have worked very closely to leverage the innovative features of both company's chips, and now proudly announce a commercial embedded CMMB solution targeting in particular netbooks, the fastest growing consumer electronics segment today."

www.mirics.com

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