Newport Media and CyberLink Collaborate to Deliver Fast-Switching Technology

Two companies combine to deliver fast channel switching between one and two seconds,
improving the overall customer experience

LAKE FOREST, Calif. — Newport Media, an innovative fabless semiconductor company supplying products to the mobile broadcast media market, today announced that it has partnered with CyberLink to deliver fast channel switching times for mobile TV. Newport’s MobiZap™ technology combined with CyberLink’s Mobile DTV Solution allows users to experience channel switching times between one to two seconds, whether moving from channels next to each other or entering random channels.

Newport Media and CyberLink will be conducting product demonstrations of Newport’s MobiZap™ technology during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Jan. 8-11, in Las Vegas.

Newport Media’s MobiZap™ technology has been integrated into its single-chip NMI300 mobile digital TV receiver, the world’s lowest-power single-chip mobile TV receiver for Digital Video Broadcasting-Handhelds (DVB-H) and DVB-Terrestrial (DVB-T) Handsets. The NMI300 is part of the Sundance Series of Mobile Television products which supports other popular air interface standards including Terrestrial-Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (T-DMB), Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial (ISDB-T) and MediaFLO.

“CyberLink is a much-respected pioneer in the mobile TV industry and we are pleased to have worked together to develop the best possible channel-switching performance for the rapidly emerging DVB-H mobile TV standard,” said Mohy Abdelgany, president and chief executive officer (CEO) for Newport Media. “Our continued collaboration will deliver solutions that combine increased performance and power savings, enhancing the overall customer experience with mobile TV.”

“As the mobile TV market matures, we are expanding the range of features we offer to consumers, cooperating with leaders in the mobile TV semiconductor market,” said Alice H. Chang, CyberLink CEO. “Newport Media’s innovative technology has broken down a number of very critical performance barriers for the mobile TV industry. We believe that the combination of Newport Media’s MobiZap™ technology with our industry-leading software, CyberLink Mobile DTV, will provide a highly compelling viewing experience for consumers.”

Newport Media’s NMI300 solution can receive up to eight simultaneous channels while maintaining an extremely low 3.0 dB noise figure to extend coverage area with superior quality. The single chip offering includes a quad-band, direct-conversion radio, a DVB-H demodulator, plus all necessary memory in a very small 7mm x 7mm footprint. No other external memory, baluns or loop filters are required to create a complete solution, and the device is manufactured using low-cost, 0.13-micron complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process technology.

CyberLink’s Mobile DTV solution incorporates technologies that support the playback of audio-video bitstream and Electronic Service Guide (ESG) data to a standards-based device. CyberLink’s solution is also compliant with the Convergence of Broadcast and Mobile Services (DVB-CBMS) specifications for Internet Protocol Datacasting using DVB-H.

Links: Newport Media, Inc.; CyberLink