Consumer electronics donning more video apps
Posted : 01 Jan 2004
EE Times' Terry Costlow once wrote "it's hard to go anywhere anymore without seeing a TV, hearing a radio or seeing people with headsets." It sounds like good news for the consumer electronics industry. Driven by the digital lifestyle, consumer electronics has become the key force to push the market growth right after information products. The trend will undoubtedly continue, and with the developments in technology, manufacturers will strive to integrate richer and higher-quality digital concerns into more diversified devices.
Thanks to the DTV revival and the introduction of different types of mixed-signal video encoders and related chips, TV-centric video applications have become the focus of this year's consumer electronics. "This will be the take-off year for video applications as a mature technology. Video capability will certainly be integrated in popular consumer electronics and diversified products," said Jackie Wu, manager for High Performance Analog at Texas Instruments Inc.
DVD player/recorder and HDTV will play crucial roles in the development of consumer electronics this year. Shipment of DVD players will maintain a moderate growth on top of the progress made last year. And DVD-based home theater-in-a-box (HTiB) and portable DVD players will also become the emphasis of R&D as well as a major profit driver for manufacturers. Traditional products will be improved in areas like interfacing functions and audio processing technologies. It is expected that 35 percent of all DVD players will support super-audio CD standard by 2005.
A wider take-up of digital still cameras and readily-available A/V content spurred consumers' demand for DVD recorders. However, the price for the load mechanism of a DVD recorder is still seven times higher than that of traditional DVD players, and a product with a price tag of over $400 is regarded by most consumers as a luxury. Still, the global shipment of DVD recorders reached 4 million last year, mostly to Europe and North America.
Yang Fei, president and director of LSI Logic HK Ltd, said the DVD recorder market in mainland China is expected to take on a good start this quarter, with some models priced under $300, and global shipment to reach 12 million units this year. DVD+RW will be a major format of DVD recorders, which uses flash as the recording media. Meanwhile, hard disk-based DVD recorders will be targeting the Japanese market.
The debut of the D-class audio amplifier has popularized HTiB systems. Combining DVD audio/recorder, radio data system and 6-channel D-class amplifiers in a single box, HTiB simplifies the structure of home entertainment systems. Reduced power consumption and greater reliability are key challenges facing portable DVD designers. Only few manufacturers with strong technical capabilities have successfully developed this product being exported to the United States and Europe. With the drop in the cost of LCD panels and ICs, and automobiles becoming more affordable, the portable DVD player market in China will enjoy rapid growth in telematics.
TV-on-phone
In addition to the anticipated growth of STBs as well as LCD and PDP TVs, various portable devices like cellphones, PDAs and laptops capable of receiving TV programs will become popular.
In Japan, for instance, telecom operators are now offering TV-on-phone services to attract consumers and intensify 3G applications. Though the offering is still far from being a hit, many manufacturers have planned to follow suit. TV cellphones are also expected to be seen in Taiwan and Korea. Following the trend, some PDA OEMs will also introduce modules for watching TV on handhelds and laptops.
TI's Wu said that many Chinese laptop manufacturers have already designed small-sized USB self-powered TV STBs, or have even used PCMCIA TV cards to add TV reception functionality to laptops easily. To improve the entertainment function on laptops, the application of USB TV set-top boxes will develop rapidly, which could spark fierce competition among manufacturers.
China DTV standard soon
The wide adoption of DVD players and the availability of digital CATV broadcasting in China will speed up the popularization of DTV in the mainland. To date, trial DTV broadcasting has been launched in 25 cities in China, indicating that the A/D shift has already taken off in the country. According to the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) road map, commercial DTV broadcasting will begin by 2005, and nationwide analog TV broadcasting will be switched off by 2015.
However, DTV broadcasting is predominantly based on the DVB standard from Europe. China's own DTV standard has yet to emerge, which had been scheduled for launch last year, but was postponed due to unsatisfactory trial results. Homegrown standards under discussion include DMB-T and ADTB-T and sources say the SARFT has worked out a new solution based on multi-carrier technologies to speed up the development of a DTV standard. China is expected to announce its own DTV standard this year, becoming the fourth country to have a proprietary DTV technology.
According to Liu Quaneng, group leader for R&D of the DTV functionality and performance standard, the concept of HDTV is confusing, and that a precise definition for HDTV should be worked out to standardize the market. He said that the standard for HDTV display has been worked out and submitted, and is expected to be released before the announcement of the DTV transmission standard.
As display technology moves on into the high-definition realm, high-speed data flow based on MPEG-2 and MP@HL has also presented new challenges for network bandwidth and data storage. While MPEG-4 evolves from the present handheld device to digital cameras and DVD players, the new H.264 specification has also grabbed attention with the AV-condensed chip with video encoder.
Steven Hsieh, industry analyst at IEK of ITRI, says that the H.264 specification is highlighted because it not only complies with MPEG-4, but it also provides higher bandwidth for some cable or satellite (broadcast/TV) businesses. This effectively solves the narrow bandwidth of MPEG-4 compared with MPEG-2. More importantly, H.264 may be backward compatible with MPEG-2. Many alternative technologies have emerged worldwide, in which H.264, MPEG-4 and China's soon-to-be-released application visualization system (AVS) standard are very competitive.
Hsieh thinks that because of the high licensing fee and insufficient infrastructure of MPEG-4, companies are afraid to go into that business. After the H.264 specification is finalized, companies like LSI Logic, Sand Video, Envivio and UBVideo may come up with related products this year. Meanwhile, driven by the developments in DTV space, H.264 is compelling to have more extensive applications next year. However, MPEG-2 will continue to be a mainstream standard for a long time.
LSI Logic's Yang said that the typical industrialization cycle for a new standard is two years, and it is unlikely for AVS and H.264 to complete this cycle before 2005. Up to now the MPEG-4 standard has gained support from some DVD solution providers and AVS is expected to become a video-signal encoding standard in China. Meanwhile, the introduction of the enhanced versatile disc (EVD) standard, which is the first global HDTV disc standard, will lead to a shakeout in the DVD industry. Sources expect shipment of EVD-based products in China to exceed 1 million in 2004 and rise to over 10 million in 2005.
Year of standardization
Digital consumer electronics - riding on digital convergence - is getting hooked to networks through organic links with hardware, software, content and services, regardless of the type of media and device. However, consumer electronics face incompatibility between technologies due to the confusing existence of the underlying methods and standards, as well as the lack of compatibility with each other.
"Specialized network technologies are being developed according to the methods preferred by developers. But due to the clash of interests standardization is not being done well," said Jung Kwang-Mo, managerial researcher of the ubiquitous computing research center at the Korea Electronics Technology Institute.
To ensure the compatibility among digital consumer electronics and promote the home network market, 17 consumer electronics companies including Sony, Intel and Samsung formed the Digital Home Working Group. The group aims not to develop a new international standard of technologies, but to introduce existing technologies that will enable digital consumer electronics to make faster inroads.
The year 2004 is expected to see the establishment of standards for the digital consumer electronics environment and related products. Through a variety of digital convergence between networks, data, devices and services of different types, digital consumer electronics will fuse with ubiquitous technologies to evolve into a new type of smart information appliance networks.
- Major Lee and Laker Pu
Electronic Engineering Times - China
