World’s First Combined Digital TV and Radio Chip

Frontier Silicon, fabless manufacturer of semiconductors for digital TV/radio consumer products have started shipping its Logie integrated circuit. The Logie chip is the world’s first single chip DVB-T/DAB integrated circuit, and will be first used in an as yet unnamed Goodmans set-top box.

Other than the Goodmans product, there aren’t any combined digital TV/radio units out there, and a chip like this will allow manufacturers to produce them easily and cheaply. If power consumption issues can be worked out, portable DVB-H/DAB devices in the near future could be a real possibility.

Anthony Sethill, CEO of Frontier Silicon, commented in a statement, “Our Logie device enables set top box manufacturers to produce low cost boxes with considerable consumer appeal, including the reception of 24 digital TV channels and 50 or more digital radio (DAB) channels that are all free. There is no other combination DVB-T/DAB chip currently available in the market that can do this.”

Frontier recently won the PricewaterhouseCoopers Hottest Technology Company of 2004 Award, and produce chips used in products from, amongst others, Grundig, Philips, Roberts and Sharp.

Frontier Silicon

Goodmans Digital

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Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people. Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon. At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC. After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video. These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?