Texas Instruments Inc. today announced development of the wireless industry's first digital TV on a single chip for cell phones, code-named "Hollywood."

The chip will receive live digital TV broadcasts at 24 to 30 frames per second using new television infrastructure that is being developed for cell phones, doing for cell phones what HDTV did for home TVs, TI explained.

"TI΄s new Hollywood digital TV chip will combine the two biggest consumer electronics inventions of our time -- the television and the cell phone," said Gilles Delfassy, TI senior VP and general manager for TI's wireless terminals business unit, in a statement. "One by one, the industry's most exciting consumer electronics are being integrated into wireless handsets, allowing consumers to get their news and entertainment whenever and wherever they want. With this new chip on the cell phone, users will enjoy digital, high-quality TV in real-time."

TI will put its digital RF processor technology to use for the chip, collapsing the traditional three-chip solution, which includes a tuner, OFDM demodulator and channel decoder processor, into the a single chip for digital TV phones. Hollywood is designed to interface with TI's OMAP processor technology, and is aimed at 90nm process technology.

Standards wise, TI is banking on those that are open and non-proprietary, including Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld (DVB-H), which was developed for Europe and is expected to extend to North America, and the Japanese specification, Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting - Terrestrial (ISDB-T), both of which the chip will support.

TI expects to provide samples of Hollywood to customers in 2006. Manufacturers are expected to launch products in conjunction with the mobile digital TV infrastructure mass deployments in 2007. Field trials are currently under way in several regions, including the U.S., Europe and Japan, TI said.

From ElectronicNews