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Seoul — Dec 13, `07 –Korea Newswire– Samsung Electronics announced today the development of a new digital TV receiver chip (S5H1432) using 65nm process technology for terrestrial digital video broadcasting (DVB-T), the digital broadcasting standard in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Australia.

Samsung’s new DVB-T receiver chip is designed for use in digital TVs, set-top boxes, TV receiver cards for PCs, USB interfaced plug-and play dongle or boxes, and DVD recorders.

Fabricated using Samsung’s advanced 65nm process technology on 300mm wafers, this new DVB-T receiver chip fully supports Europe’s NorDig unified standard for digital broadcasting. The power consumption level for this chip is at an industry low of 80mW, less than one third of the conventional 250mW average power consumption of existing solutions on the market.

By using a proprietary processing algorithm, Samsung’s new DVB-T receiver chip enables high performance even in single frequency network environments, reducing the channel scanning interval by half, to less than 0.1-second, from the conventional 0.2-second.

The new DVB-T receiver chip is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2008. This DVB-T receiver chip, together with other Samsung logic devices and solutions, will be on display at CES 2008.

ALVISO, Calif — Nov 29, ‘07 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — TiVo offered the following statement today on the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) decision with respect to the reexamination of TiVo’s Multimedia Timewarping System patent, U.S. patent number 6,233,389 (the “Time Warp Patent”):

“We are extremely pleased that the PTO has now found all claims of the Time Warp Patent to be valid after conducting a reexamination of the patent requested by EchoStar. This decision by the PTO is final and not appealable by EchoStar. Today’s decision by the PTO brings us another step closer to ending EchoStar’s continued infringement and we are hopeful that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will uphold the district court judgment of patent infringement and reinstate the injunction.” More at PRNewsWire.

Nov 27, ‘07 — Reuters is reporting on General Electric’s NBC Universal agreeing to start offering interactive advertising services and subscribe to a ratings service from TiVo, citing the companies.

“The agreement covers GE’s 14 networks — including NBC, Telemundo and Bravo — as well as its 10 NBC-owned TV stations. Advertisers who buy television commercials on those networks and television stations will have the option of adding an interactive component to those spots.

They can insert TiVo “tags” into television commercials that let viewers click on an icon when watching an ad to obtain more information about a product, the companies said. NBC Universal also purchased a ratings service from TiVo that provides second-by-second viewership ratings on television commercials”. Reuters.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — BUSINESS WIRE — Nov 06, ‘07 — Debuting today, the newest members of Hitachi GST’s CinemaStar cast of hard drives are ready for their close-up. Hitachi is offering multiple form factors to address a wide variety of needs in the growing consumer electronics market. A 3.5-inch drive with capacities up to 500GB provides industry-best power utilization and performance, while the more compact 2.5-inch drive with capacities up to 250GB is well-suited for use in sleek set-top boxes and portable digital video devices.

The abundance of digital video has been fueling consumer demand for digital video recorders (DVRs) with more storage capacity and new slim, space-saving designs. The CinemaStar C5K250 and P7K500 are the latest in a long line of Hitachi drives optimized for use in home entertainment applications.

More at Hitachi, Press Release, CinemaStar 7K500, Cinemastar C5K250.