Maxscend Debuts IC for Huge Potential China Digital TV Market

SHANGHAI, China, Feb. 13 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- Eyeing the huge potential China digital TV market, Maxscend Technologies announced the MXD1320, a demodulator IC fully compliant with China digital terrestrial television standard.

Like many other countries around the world, China is in the process of switching from analog to digital TV broadcasting. The home-grown national standard, code-named GB20600-2006, became mandatory for Chinese broadcasters on August 1st, 2007. New TV sets with digital tuner need to conform to this standard starting from 2008. According to current time table, most regions in China will be covered by digital TV broadcasting before 2012 and analog TV broadcasting will be switched off in 2015.

There are currently around 470 million TV sets in China with annual TV sales over 40 million units. Even though the cable and satellite subscription grows rapidly in recent years, 65% of Chinese households, mainly in rural area, still rely on over-the-air broadcasts.

According to an estimate from the China digital TV industry association, there will be 230 million digital TV users in China in five years from now, with a yearly increase of 70 percent. The digital terrestrial TV standard will help make digital TV a 500 billion CNY (62.5 billion USD) business in China in 2015.

Despite the huge potential, the actual deployment of digital TV has been slow and hampered by the complexity of the standard. The GB20600-2006 standard is a fusion of a multi-carrier version developed by Tsinghua University in Beijing and a single-carrier version developed by Jiaotong University in Shanghai. The dual mode support is favored by service providers because it brings freedom to achieve the best frequency utilization and coverage. However it also presents a considerable challenge to the receiver design. Before the MXD1320, two separate circuitries in a chip or even two separate chips have to be deployed to provide the dual-mode support. Such solution significantly increases the total system cost and design complexity.

The MXD1320 becomes the first device which truly supports both modes defined in the national standard at low cost. Rather than sticking two demodulators on one chip, the MXD1320 achieves maximum resource sharing with innovative algorithm and architecture, thus incurring only minimum extra cost comparing to single mode demodulator design. Designed with advanced low power design techniques, the MXD1320 also has the lowest power consumption of 170mW.

Such device has long been waiting for by the TV and set-top box manufacturers. Hailing the debut of the MXD1320, the expression “A sweet rain falls on the parched seedlings” was used by several speakers, representing the TV and set-top box design houses, at the product announcement meeting held in Beijing in January 2008.

“The debut of the MXD1320 broke the myth that the single carrier mode and multi-carrier mode can not be adhered together. It proved that the national standard is a coherent entity instead of two unrelated parts glued together”, proclaimed by Professor Zhixing Yang, Head of the original draft committee of the nation standard.

Based on the MXD1320 engineering samples, six major TV and set-top box manufactories have demonstrated their receiver products. A dozen of other design-in projects are on-going. MXD1320 production chips will be shipped to customer in the middle of March.

It is widely believed that the Olympics bring great boost to the digital TV industry and whet people’s appetites for digital TV and high definition TV. On January 1, 2008, Hong Kong and Beijing officially launched the terrestrial digital TV broadcasting with high definition channels offered in both cities. The HD channels will provide extensive coverage of 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Other cities are expected to follow suite soon with at least 37 metropolitans in China having terrestrial digital TV by mid 2008.

“We expect to capture at least 50% of the market share in China this year,” said Mr. Zhihan Xu confidently, CEO of Maxscend Technologies, “With the notable advantage of our product, there is no excuse for us to miss this goal”.

About Maxscend Technologies Inc.

Maxscend is a leading digital TV IC fabless design house in China. Its low power, low cost, competitive solutions and market prowess won it the Red Herring global 100 award in December 2007.

Funded by Sequoia Capital and Angel Investors, Maxscend Technologies Inc. was incorporated in April 2006, and located in the ZhangJiang High-tech Park in Shanghai, China. The founding team consists of Silicon Valley returnees with many years of R&D, management and China local business experience. Maxscend provides digital TV chip solutions, and aims to become a world-class IC design company.