Frontier Silicon and S3 demonstrate world's first turn-key solution for multi-mode mobile DTV

DUBLIN & LONDON — Next week at the 3GSM World Congress, Silicon & Software Systems Ltd. (S3) and Frontier Silicon will be demonstrating a complete multi-mode reference design for Mobile Digital Television. The reference design incorporates Frontier Silicon’s Paradiso (FS1030) chip, an advanced multi-standard DVB-H/DVB-T/T-DMB/DAB-IP mobile TV receiver, and S3’s onHandTV™ multi-standard mobile digital TV client software. By offering a turn-key DVB-H/T-DMB solution, proven in deployed mobile TV networks across the world, handset and consumer electronics manufacturers can gain enormous economies of scale, significantly reducing time-to-market and risk with a single reference platform solution.

The two companies have been working closely together for over a year to address the emerging mobile DTV market. This has enabled them to develop a very efficient reference design, minimizing system power, consumption and cost, whilst maximizing flexibility and portability across networks. The solution uses mobile DTV silicon technology that has already shipped in over one million Frontier Silicon mobile TV IC’s (integrated circuits), and has proven interoperability with commercial networks guaranteed by S3’s onHandTV software client.

Matt Hatch, VP, Mobile Digital TV, Frontier Silicon stated, “The goal has been to offer a complete solution that goes beyond a basic mobile DTV reference platform. Most companies believe it is adequate to simply interface receiver chipsets with mobile TV middleware. This platform goes way beyond that, offering a complete proven mobile TV stack. The significant network interoperability testing both companies have done will ensure device manufacturers sail through compliance and device qualification, minimizing the time to product qualification in a market which has diverged across multiple standards.”

John Maguire, General Manager, Consumer Mobile, S3 added, “With S3’s position as a leading provider of Mobile DTV solutions in the DVB-H market and Frontier’s proven expertise in delivering mass market DAB and T-DMB solutions, this collaboration is delivering choice to the device manufacturers as they seek to deploy the same device into different geographies. By using a multimode stack, OEMs and ODMs minimize additional development and integration cost to address multiple markets with similar devices.”

The reference designs will be demonstrated at 3GSM Congress on both stands – Frontier Silicon (Hall 1, Stand J36), S3 (Hall 1, Stand 1F17).