Silicon Labs showed continuing support for analogue TV standards,as it announced a family of hybrid TV tuners.
The family covers just about every combination of digital reception,analogue reception,and analogue demodulation-all in the same pin-compatible 4x4mm QFN-28.
"Although a few countries have successfully switched to digital-only broadcasts,more than 95%of today's TVs must continue to support analogue broadcast reception,"said SiLabs."In addition,analogue-only TVs prevalent in China,India and Southeast Asia represent about 20%of the global TV market.For these regions,analogue TV tuners often require a high tolerance to non-standard analogue TV signal conditions.
There is close competition in the TV tuner market between SiLabs,NXP,MaxLinear and Sony.
According to SiLabs,its chips'key selling point is that they require no:external balun,tracking-filter inductors,nor inductive power supply filtering.
Of the family,Si2178 carries a super-set of all available features.
It integrates:an analogue TV tuner plus PAL-SECAM-NTSC demodulator,and a digital TV tuner covering ATSC/QAM,DVB-T2/T/C2/C,ISDB-T/C and DTMB.
Along with the other chips,it uses the firm's existing digital low-IF architecture,along with its 4th-generation of RF front-end.
"The Si2178 performance exceeds MOPLL[mixer oscillator phase-locked loop]-based tuners and includes industry-leading 2nd-order distortion performance,"claimed the firm,which would not reveal quantitative data to Electronics Weekly for commercial reasons.
Enhancements,it said,include increased tolerance to Wi-Fi and LTE interference without external filtering components,single 3.3V rail operation,and a"new integrated power-on reset monitor".
Power consumption is claimed to be<500mW,"a 50%reduction from the prior-generation TV tuners from Silicon Labs",said the firm.
As for the other family members:
Si2158 is all of a 2178,except the analogue demodulator
Si2148 covers digital standards only:ATSC/QAM,DVB-T2/T/C2/C,ISDB-T/C and DTMB
Si2138 covers analogue standards only,and includes an NTSC-PAL-SECAM demodulator.
Si2128,is the analogue 2138 without a demodulator.
Application targets are:mains and portable TVs;DVD and Blu-ray recorders;and terrestrial and cable set-top boxes.
