Zoran Corporation announced that it is demonstrating at the HDTV conference a complete hardware and software solution for building an integrated Digital Television (DTV) targeted at the United States market.

The reference design, based on Zoran's SupraHD 660 processor, is a full featured system that allows tuning, decoding and display of analog (NTSC) and digital (ATSC) terrestrial broadcast. The SupraHD processor includes an MPEG-2 decoder, NTSC video decoder, HDMI receiver, IEEE-1394 interface, audio DAC, and an advanced video processing engine to control and directly drive LCD and other high definition television displays. The reference design also includes Zoran's Cascade 2 front-end demodulator that supports VSB and QAM modulation schemes.

The new ATSC/NTSC compliant reference design reduces the overall system cost for manufacturers of digital televisions due to the high level of integration within the SupraHD 660 IC, the cost-effective Cascade 2 demodulator, and the partnerships Zoran has with other component suppliers represented on the board.

Performance and picture quality is achieved through Zoran's video processing, which provides edge enhancement, color correction, adaptive contrast enhancement, and motion adaptive deinterlacing.

The reference hardware module accepts composite (CVBS), S-video (Y/C), and component (YPbPr) inputs processed by the on-chip 3D comb filter color space converter. The output interfaces can directly drive an LCD/PDP panel or a CRT TV. Other outputs include L/R audio for internal speakers and SPDIF for multi-channel output to an external audio receiver. The complete hardware design also supports basic application functionalities required for a DTV, such as ATSC/NTSC software stack, Electronic Program Guide (EPG), closed-caption decoding, parental control, basic audio control, and basic video control. For ease of connectivity to external devices, the IEEE-1394 software stack is also bundled with the software package.

Complete reference designs (ZR8390660-ATSC-LCDX) are available now for qualified Zoran customers.