Mirics and Spreadtrum announce availability of embedded CMMB PCTV solution

CMMB is the mobile TV technology backed by China’s State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). With coverage extending to 150 cities already, SARFT expects CMMB to be supported in 337 Chinese cities by the end of 2009, and have a total population coverage of 500 million by 2011. Multi-media enhanced portable PC platforms such as netbooks are ideally suited for receiving the live TV and radio content and data services that CMMB supports and for delivering to consumers on-the-go entertainment and information.

The announced embedded solution measures just 30mmx26.8mm, and has been implemented in the industry standard half mini-card format. The mini-card integrates Mirics’ MSi002 FlexiRF(TM) silicon tuner and Spreadtrum’s SC6600V CMMB demodulator system-on-chip. The solution features all of the CMMB hardware and software required to deliver a complete ready-to-integrate PCTV package, including the ability to support conditional access, and has been optimized for BlazeVideo’s DTV video player.

Commenting on the announcement, Simon Atkinson, CEO, Mirics, said: “As consumers increasingly turn towards netbook PCs as their prime device for multi-media content consumption, CMMB is the ideal technology to deliver live content to such portable platforms. With the announcement of this half mini-card solution, manufacturers can now very simply embed broadcast TV into portable PC’s.” Dr. Leo Li, President & CEO, Spreadtrum, said: “In the short elapsed time since Spreadtrum and Mirics announced a strategic PCTV collaboration, the two companies have worked very closely to leverage the innovative features of both company’s chips, and now proudly announce a commercial embedded CMMB solution targeting in particular netbooks, the fastest growing consumer electronics segment today.”

The announced PCTV half mini-card platform is now available to lead customers and partners for platform integration.