Philips chips to improve digital TV signals in UK

Philips is developing a new silicon chip that will improve digital TV reception on portable DVB-T compliant devices, such as handheld TVs and USB TV sticks.

At Computex there was a real buzz around such tiny devices – with the definite trend towards digital rather than analogue reception.

Until recently, users relied on PCI tuner cards to turn their PCs into TVs, but there has been a run of USB devices – and certainly at Computex, companies showed off many that are due to hit the streets over the coming months.

But tests by Personal Computer World on such products in the past have found that digital TVs work very poorly in the UK when used with the small travel antennas they come with; often there is simply no channels being found.

While USB TV tuners offer users far greater mobility, and can easily be plugged into different machines in the home or office, they need to be hooked to a roof aerial to get the Freeview channels they are designed to receive.

Jackie Ku, senior sales manager at Twinhan, which concentrates on USB and internal PCI digital TV tuners, rather than the handheld models, said: “We’re finding more people are interested in USB than PCI, because notebooks are getting more popular. And because of their price, portability and they are plug and play.”

The companies we spoke to that are releasing USB and handheld products into the UK often seemed unaware of their poor performance in Britain when using travel or embedded aerials.

But Philips, which makes the silicon chips used by many suppliers for their TV products, confirmed that in the UK, many will only show TV if they are hooked up to a rooftop antenna.

Handheld devices from both MSI and ECS claimed to work in the UK with their inbuilt antennas, even when travelling in a car or train.

When PCW suggested that these antennas were not strong enough for the UK market, the companies disagreed. But Philips, which makes the silicon that many companies use for their TV tuners, said they may be unlikely to work well at the moment unless using a roof aerial.

A spokesman for Philips said the UK digital TV signal was weak and further hindered by noise from GSM mobile phones. “[The new Philips chip] includes a filter in the silicon to remove the GSM interference. This helps give a better signal. But countries have to implement DVB-T in a proper way,” he said.

Its new silicon chip comes out in the next few weeks, and Philips provides a reference design which companies can then take and if they wish to, modify.

But it will be several months before final products using its updated silicon will be available to buy. In addition to improved filtering of weaker signals, the chip will also reduce power consumption, important for USB TV tuners and the handheld DVB-T TVs that rely on battery life.

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