Chrontel, Inc., the world's leading supplier of PC-TV encoder chips, today introduced the industry's first family of VGA-to-TV encoders that feature a universal digital interface.

By providing a universal digital interface, Chrontel can support the full range of non-standard digital output capabilities offered across dozens of different VGA chips. The first two encoders in the family are the CH7003 and the CH7004, which are fully pin-compatible. The CH7004 includes Macrovision support, making it an optimal solution for DVD-based systems.

"Our proven mixed-signal technology and market leadership uniquely position Chrontel to address the PC-TV output, time to market and cost requirements of consumer and PC OEMs," said Ken Lowe, Chrontel's Director of Marketing. "With the TV-out capability becoming a 'must have' function by year's end, the leading 2D/3D graphics chip manufacturers looked to Chrontel for their next-generation, digital interface solution."

Cirrus Logic, Cyrix, Matrox, NeoMagic, NVIDIA, 3Dfx and Tseng Labs, among others, partnered with Chrontel to define the universal digital interface.

"By combining premium TV encoder features with a clean digital interface, the Chrontel CH7003 forms an ideal companion chip to 3Dfx's family of high performance 3D graphics chips," said Scott Sellers, VP of Research & Development at 3Dfx.

The CH7003 and the CH7004 are ideal for any system-level PC solution where a TV is used for a display device. This includes presentation monitor support for laptops and portables, as well as set-top boxes and web TV consumer products.

"NVIDIA anticipates that the PC will need to provide very high quality TV-output to large-screen TV displays in 1998," said Richard Silverman, Vice President of Marketing at NVIDIA. "The widespread availability of mainstream high-performance 3D graphics for games and inexpensive PC-based DVD title content will fuel this trend. The high quality Chrontel devices are an excellent match to NVIDIA's graphics products to meet these market trends."

The CH7003 and CH7004 are cost effective, digital VGA-to-NTSC/PAL encoders which are stand-alone integrated circuits (ICs) designed to provide a high-quality, PC 97 compliant solution for TV output from desktop and laptop computers. Chrontel provides a superior solution by eliminating the annoying tendency for on-screen text to shimmer (jitter) and for the edges of the PC screen to be lost due to TV overscanning.

The two new devices accept a digital pixel data stream from a compatible VGA controller (or equivalent) and convert it directly into NTSC, NTSC-EIA (Japan) or PAL (B, D, G, H, and M) TV format, with composite or S-Video (Y-C) outputs available. The devices support auto-detection of TV presence and provide sub-carrier Genlock with frequency control to lock dot crawl into place.

Technical Details

The CH7003 and CH7004 integrate many new features: a digital video encoder with a 9-bit output DAC (digital-to-analog) interface to decode pixel data in YCrCB (CCIR601 or 656) or RGB (15/16 or 24-bit) formats; a 4-line vertical flicker filter, and high-accuracy, low-jitter 12-bit phase-locked loop (PLL) to create very high quality video, especially for sharp text displays which ordinarily suffer from computer to TV translations. An on-board scaling engine supports full vertical and horizontal underscan capability; this allows for 25 total display modes, including 640x480, 640x400, 720x400, 800x600, and 512x384 resolutions, to be displayed without the edges of the PC screen becoming lost on the TV. This also includes two to three scaling factors per resolution to enable image sizing to suit the application and TV characteristics.

The input pixel datapaths in the CH7003 and CH7004 can be 8-, 12- or 16-bit wide, multiplexed or non-multiplexed, and they support clocking in either the master or slave mode. Both chips are fully programmable through an I2C serial port to enable a complete PC solution using a TV as the primary display device. They also fully conform to the European TV connector standard known as "SCART," as well as the CCIR 624-3 standard. The CH7003/7004 are supplied with complete Windows and DOS driver software.

In addition to the above features, the CH7004 also adds dot-crawl reduction circuitry and Chrontel's proprietary text edge enhancement technology, which substantially improves text readability on TV screens. In addition, the CH7004 supports the Macrovision copy protection technology used in commercial video software.

Pricing and Availability

The CH7003 is priced at $8.50, in quantities of 1,000. Samples will be shipping in August, with production quantities available in November. The CH7004 is priced at $9.50, in quantities of 1,000, with samples available in September and production quantities available in January. Both devices are offered in a 44-pin PLCC package.

About Chrontel

Chrontel develops visually oriented multimedia solutions, based on mixed signal integrated circuits, for consumer, computer, and communication markets. Chrontel is the industry leader in TV encoder solutions, shipping over one million units per month into PC, video CD, and web browser applications.

Additional information about Chrontel may be accessed on the World Wide Web at http://www.chrontel.com/ or contact the company at 408/383-9328.