Audio Video News

Last week, Ravisent Technologies announced a technology partnership with Oren Semiconductor, which sells DSP-based digital television demodulator ICs to manufacturers such as Sony, Hughes, and Global Telemann Systems for use in TVs, VCRs, PC cards, and set-top boxes. Ravisent and Oren say they will jointly develop complete broadcast reception and playback solutions for delivering HDTV broadcasts to consumers using the current generation of personal computers.

Drawing on Oren's expertise in digital television signal demodulation and leveraging Ravisent's experience in digital audio and video decoding and transport stream management, the two companies hope to deliver complete HDTV product technologies to the market. The companies say that this will enable PC manufacturers and board vendors to market the "ideal, high-quality interactive platform for true HDTV."

The technologies being combined include Oren's Bridgeport PCI video and broadcast TV decoders and Ravisent's CineMaster DTV (see Patrick J. Megenity's previous report), an all-software, all-format HDTV decoder capable of supporting full-frame-rate HDTV on a PC. The Oren Bridgeport PCI Card features the OR51211A 8-VSB receiver IC with tuned 8-VSB front-end technology and a PCI bridge to allow software demultiplexing and decoding of off-air MPEG-2 streams.

Oren's Jacob Tanz says that his company chose Ravisent as a software partner "because of their proven performance and the ease-of-use of CineMaster technology. In addition, Ravisent has an established presence in the PC market, where digital broadcast is just breaking the surface." Ravisent's Sebastian Pistritto adds that "this cooperative development effort enables PC DTV products to be more readily available in the market . . . we will be able to increase our digital video and audio software position into the broadcast digital entertainment arena."