Tality Launches Free-To-Air DTV IP Solution

Solution Accelerates Development of DTV Products for The Mass Market

San Jose, CA. - May 20, 2002 - Tality Corporation today announced the availability of a complete licensable hardware and software solution for the Free-to-Air (FTA) Digital Terrestrial Television market. The solution offers customers a low cost, low risk, fast track to market when developing DTV products for the UK and other geographies. The small hardware and software footprint, combined with a flexible architecture, enables simple integration to existing analog products.

"There has been a lot of negative and misleading press recently regarding the DTV market in the UK, in the light of the troubled ITV™ Digital PayTV downfall," said Ciaran McAleer, business manager for DTV at Tality. "With over 15 million households receiving analog TV only, Tality believes the market is ripe for multiple low cost digital upgrade products in the home. The opening up of the ITV Digital multiplexers’ license creates an opportunity to increase the current 14-channel FTA offering and/or improve reception quality. Tality’s offering addresses that market," added McAleer.

The Tality solution is based on the ST Microelectronics 5518 core and a protocol stack for the implementation of the DVB-T standard. Existing TV, VCR and DVDR product designs can be rapidly upgraded to offer Digital Terrestrial TV access with minimal risk.

Tality undertakes all aspects of communications product design, including complete system and sub-system design, and both hardware and software component design. In addition to core features of the FTA DTV Platform, Tality can provide hardware support for DVB Common Interface and larger memory footprints. Additional software support can include porting third-party applications, such as an over-air download loader, MHEG5 (Digital Teletext) engine, Common Interface stack, Internet browser, Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) and other DTV middleware. Tality’s design services span product conceptualization through implementation for production manufacturing, enabling our customers to get better products to market faster.

"Widescreen viewing has become rapidly established in the UK with the growth of digital TV and the parallel developments in home cinema and in the growing popularity of DVDs," said Brendan Slamin, business manager of the Digital Television Group (DTG). "2 million widescreen sets were sold in the UK in 2001, accounting for 46% of widescreen sales throughout Europe. There are now 4.5 million widescreen sets in UK homes. The only way to receive true widescreen broadcasts is via digital television and this is reflected in the high proportion of digital homes using widescreen TVs."

"There is a healthy FTA DTV market burgeoning in the UK," said McAleer "and Tality is well positioned to support our customers develop products for that market."

About Tality
Tality Corporation, a subsidiary of Cadence Design Systems, Inc., is the world’s largest electronic product development outsourcing provider. Leading and emerging technology companies around the globe leverage Tality’s engineering services and intellectual property for the design of complex electronic systems and integrated circuits. Tality is headquartered in San Jose, California. For more information about Tality, please visit us at www.tality.com.

Press Contacts

Jim Douglas
Tality Corporation
Phone: 408-944-7955
E-mail: jimd@tality.com

Leslie Taschner
Cohn & Wolfe
Phone: 415-477-4542
E-mail: leslie_taschner@cohnwolfe.com