ATI debuts Theater 313 HDTV chip

ATI's new Theater 313 chip offers advanced functionality and high performance for HDTV receivers.

ATI Technologies Inc. introduced the THEATER 313 — a simple and cost-effective way for television manufacturers to meet United States Federal Communications Commission requirements and “Plug andPlay” agreement. The new receiver chip will be attractive to manufacturers of set-top boxes, ITDs (integrated tuner demodulator), PC-DTVs (personal computer-digital television) and datacastequipment.

Designed to operate in Digital Cable Ready, analog NTSC (National Television Standards Committee), and ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) terrestrial broadcast environments, ATI’s THEATER 313 offers a high level of integration that allows manufacturers to develop high performance, high functionality products in a space- and cost-effective manner.

“It’s no longer good enough to just deliver world class ATSC receiver performance,” said Mike Gittings, Director of Digital Television Marketing, DTV/Consumer Products Group, ATI Technologies Inc. “The market has become more complex. FCC mandates require the phased in integration of ATSC receivers into new integrated DTV products. Manufacturers and consumers desire integrated digital cable compatibility. We also realize that analog content is not going away. Today’s solutions must address all of these market requirements. On top of that, modern receivers must improve digital reception reliability, provide better analog picture quality, and reduce cost. THEATER 313 is designed to address all these needs.”

THEATER 313 enables manufacturers to deliver exceptional cable performance products to consumers. THEATER 313 offers quick access to signals while reducing interference. For digital terrestrial reception, the advanced equalizer provides exceptional dynamic and static multi-path performance. Superior performance in harsh environments is achieved by the use of robust synchronization and equalization algorithms.

ATI’s THEATER 313 incorporates a universal QPSK (quadrature phase shift keying) forward data channel (FDC) receiver and a BTSC/Dual FM demodulator and decoder. The THEATER 313 is configurable to operate in either the ITU-J.83B/SCTE DVS-031 compliant 64 QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) or 256 QAM modes used by digital cable systems, the NTSC analog system, or the ATSC compliant 8VSB (vestigal sideband) mode used in digital terrestrial broadcasting. For digitally modulated input signals (QAM or 8VSB), THEATER 313 outputs a parallel or serial MPEG compliant transport stream.

For analog NTSC input signals, THEATER 313 outputs the video as an analog composite video signal and the audio as decoded digital Left and Right channels via an I2S port. For the out-of-band FDC, THEATER 313 performs the QPSK demodulation and provides a direct digital interface to CableCARDâ„¢ devices.