NXP, the spinoff of Philips’ semiconductor operations, will unveil on Thursday a new chip for flat panel televisions that it claims will bring advanced features and the Internet to mainstream TVs.
Bringing MPEG-4 decoding and 120-Hertz to TVs
TV makers have been eager to put new features such as 120-Hertz capabilities and support for MPEG-4 Internet video steaming into their machines to differentiate them and hold up prices.
The TV550 mixed signal processor will enable these features to be built into lower price LCD and plasma boxes, said Vincent Vermeer, product marketing manager at NXP.
The new chip will lower the price of a circuit board for a 120-Hertz television by as much as 50 percent, Vermeer said. The circuit board of a more traditional 60-Hertz flat-panel TV could see cost savings of 20 percent.
Samples of the chip should be available in January and ship commercially in the second quarter. Sets should be on the market in the third quarter.
TVs with 120-Hertz capabilities update, or refresh, an image 120 times a second, double the 60-frame-per-second rate of a 60-Hertz set. This allows for motion to be displayed more accurately.
Jean-Baptiste Su
Mark Boslet
