Philips launches DVB-H chip at US market

TV on the move

Royal Philips Electronics today introduced a DVB-H chipset that enables mobile handhelds to receive digital TV broadcasting over the air.

The chipset is specifically designed for the network Crown Castle Mobile Media is building in the US. Crown Castle has acquired terrestrial rights to 5 megahertz of L band spectrum and is expected to wholesale the network to cellular network operators in 2006. The company will show its technology at the coming Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

A competing technology to DVB-H is already available in some Asian countries, including Japan and South Korea. In Europe most mobile operators are still experimenting with the standard.

Although both Texas Instruments and STMicroelectronics have announced plans to launch DVB-H-based TV-on-mobile chips, Philips is still the only vendor with a single package solution. The only other product on the market is a combined TV tuner from Freescale and DVB-H demodulator from France-based DiBcom.®