Newport Media Unveils World's First Mobile TV System-on-Chip (SoC) For ISDB-T Standard in Japan

- Newport Media, an innovative fabless semiconductor company supplying products to the mobile broadcast media market, today unveiled the world’s first complete single-chip solution for the mobile version of Japan’s Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial (ISDB-T) digital television standard. The NMI320 Sundance J mobile digital TV receiver integrates an RF tuner, demodulator and all required memory in a single monolithic CMOS device that will enable designers to deliver today’s smallest, most power-efficient handset products.

“The NMI320 SoC supports both one-segment – also known as One-Seg – and three-segment – also known as Three-Seg – modes of operation, and combines superior performance with best-in-class power consumption, which are critical requirements for the ISDB-T market segment,” said Mohy Abdelgany, president and chief executive officer for Newport Media. “This is our second SoC for the mobile TV marketplace, and joins our recently announced Sundance H SoC as the world’s most highly integrated mobile TV devices for two of the world’s most popular standards. Additionally, we continue to lead with industry-low power consumption, best-in-class RF performance and one-second channel-switching speed – all extremely important criteria for an optimal user experience.”

Key features of the NMI320 solution include up to 120dB of variable gain, 50dB of image rejection and greater than 55dB of adjacent channel selectivity. The device consumes only 70mW of power, yet still combines an extremely low 3.0 dB noise figure with a very high +20dBm IP3. The monolithic chip includes a dual-band radio, an ISDB-T One-Seg and Three-Seg demodulator, plus all necessary memory in a very small footprint. No other external memory, baluns or loop filters are required to create a complete solution with a very low bill of materials.

The London-based market research firm Screen Digest reported in June 2007 that the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA) estimates that mobile TV handset shipments almost doubled during the first quarter of 2007 to a total of 7.3 million handsets, just under a year after first commercial deployment of the ISDB-T based technology known as One-Seg. JEITA said that the strongest growth was recorded in March 2007, with more than 1.6 million shipments. One-Seg service is accessible without charge, and the associated handsets are available from all Japanese operators.

Newport Media’s Sundance Series for DVB-H, mobile DVB-T and ISDB-T will also serve as the foundation for future solutions aimed at other popular air interface standards including, but not limited to, Terrestrial-Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (T-DMB) and MediaFLO.

The Sundance J NMI320 is available in sample quantities and priced at $8.00 per unit in OEM quantities of 10,000. The device is manufactured using low-cost, .13-micron complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process technology and packaged in conventional fine pitch plastic ball grid array (FBGA) as well as chip-scale packaging. Volume production is scheduled to commence in the fourth calendar quarter of 2007.

About Newport Media, Inc.

Newport Media is a fabless semiconductor company that develops and sells highly integrated solutions for emerging digital audio and mobile TV broadcast standards. Newport Media has assembled a management and development team with comprehensive system semiconductor experience in wireless handset and digital set-top box industries.

Newport Media’s development team leverages its collective experience in these converging industries to develop broadcast multimedia architectures and IC implementations with unprecedented performance, power consumption, size and cost. For more information, visit www.newportmediainc.com.