It seems everyone wants some space on our desktops these days. Following last weeks story that DVD is coming c/o C-Cube, <057//monitor//3.3>
now it’s Digital TV turn. There were three announcements made this week, two involving the mighty Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. with Philips Electronics and Compaq, and one with Teralogic.
What they are both offering is basically “a circuit board that will enable your personal computers to receive digital-TV signals”. Matsushita’s Panasonic unit has been working with Compaq Computer to design its DTV accessory for PCs, and Compaq says it will offer the card as an option to consumers early next year. The computer company says it won’t make the card standard on its PCs until digital broadcasting becomes more popular. Meanwhile, Philips Semiconductors’ product says it has developed a design for the cards that it plans to license to others for manufacturing and marketing. By assigning most of the DTV signal decoding duties to the PC’s microprocessor, the Philips design uses fewer chips and will cost less than the Compaq model.
As the big boys sort out who’s they think are better, TeraLogic, Inc. has quietly unveiled the Cougar Digital Television Reference Platform (catchy title). As the press release proclaims: “The Cougar platform is designed to give OEMs a time-to-market advantage in developing next generation digital TVs, set-tops and DTV/PC systems that outperform existing DTV solutions in cost, features and multimedia capabilities.”
The common thread with all of these products is that they will all enable you use your PC as a DTV, but the difference lies in the chip sets, where you live (kinda important) and ultimately which service provider you subscribe to. Stay tuned for more.
