Tech Company Touts Solution to Quick DTV Transition
Technology company Zoran went to the Hill last week to push its digital-to-analog converter technology, which it says will aid a hard DTV transition deadline. Powered by a single low-cost chip, Zoran says, the technology will let any analog set display DTV feeds. Company officials told legislative aides that within months it could provide a converter retailing for about $67, or as little as $50 in quantity. The converter could take the form of a set- top box or be integrated into new analog sets.
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That promise drew congressional staffers to watch Zoran’s demonstration in the Rayburn House office building. House Commerce Committee Chmn. Barton (R-Tex.) wants a Dec. 31, 2006, DTV conversion, but he and other lawmakers feel for millions of analog viewers whose sets suddenly will go dark. “The reason we made this model is to get the cost out of the way,” said Vikram Shrivastava, Zoran’s senior strategic mktg. mgr.
The Zoran set-top converts an over-the-air DTV signal to analog and sends to the analog set’s antenna input. Picture quality resembles that of a DVD movie on analog TV, Shrivastava said. The box also supports basic functions required for DTV, such as electronic program guide, closed-caption decoding, parental control, basic audio control, basic video control and remote control. Zoran has partnerships with module makers in Japan and Taiwan, Shrivastava said. He wouldn’t elaborate.
Zoran’s demonstrations of low-cost DTV receiver solutions came as today’s (Mon.) deadline approached at the FCC for replies on a CEA petition to revise the DTV tuner mandate compliance schedule for 25-36” sets. In the first round of comments, CE makers pushed to hasten from July 2006 to March 2006 the deadline by which all such sets must have DTV tuners built in, as a compromise to eliminate the July 2005 date when 50% must be so equipped. They said the 50% rule must go to avoid putting sets with an on-air DTV tuner at a competitive disadvantage to sets lacking one, because of the significant price disparity.
But not all CE makers are on the same page, we're told. “There were some in the meetings who told the others, ‘Let’s let sleeping dogs lie'” by complying with the existing DTV tuner mandate, one senior executive told us. Another executive privately voiced fear the petition may come back to haunt CE, since broadcasters have united behind a push for the FCC to make late 2005 the new 100% deadline if the Commission grants CEA’s request to scrap the 50% compliance date. NAB/MSTV and Pappas Telecasting said moving the 100% date forward 7 months from the existing schedule and by 4 months from what CEA wants would let consumers take advantage of the 2005 holiday selling season and a Jan. jump in TV set sales that precedes the Super Bowl.