New DVDR reference designs from Zoran

Zoran Corp. announced availability of two new reference designs for DVD recorders with integrated support for digital broadcast standards, one with ATSC for the United States and another with DVB for Europe.

Both new platforms are based on the Activa 100/150 DVD recorder solution and support stand-alone DVD or hybrid DVD+ HDD (hard-disk drive recorders). According to the press release, the new reference platforms have been optimized to receive and record either high-definition (HD) content from ATSC broadcasts in the United States or standard-definition DVB sources in Europe, using Zoran's integrated digital television processors SupraHD or SupraTV, respectively.

"These new reference designs allow consumers around the world to use a single DVD combo product to record digital broadcasts directly to DVD or to the hard-disk drive," said Dr. Jinxing Liu, SVP and GM of DVD division at Zoran. "Our customers can quickly bring cost-effective combo systems to market that enable DVD recorders with digital receiver STB capabilities."

For the U.S. market, Zoran's DVDR+ATSC reference design uses the SupraHD 640 HD digital TV processor and Zoran's Cascade 2 front-end demodulator with the Activa 100/150 to enable recording of HD broadcast signals to DVD or hard disk. This solution includes a transport processor, HD MPEG video decoder, and Zoran's HDXtreme video processing and picture-enhancement technology.

For DVB systems in Europe, the Zoran reference design uses the SupraTV 150 integrated standard definition digital TV processor to support free-to-air satellite or terrestrial broadcasts throughout Europe and Asia, including support for third-party middleware such as MHEG-5 for the U.K. market and selected conditional access systems for other markets.

The DVDR subsystem features a best-in-class analog video decoder with 3D Y/C separation and time-base correction, a high-resolution progressive scan video encoder, and full system support for authoring and editing DVDs in DVD-Video, DVD-VR, and DVD+VR formats with full verifier compliant accuracy, said Zoran. The integration of these components allows compatible, reliable recording with editing, lowers overall system cost, and gives consumers a high quality, seamless viewing and listening experience, the company added.

Both reference designs come with a complete software stack that enables OEMs to quickly bring products to market. Software includes a full recording, playback and tuner control application suite with an easy-to-use, rich user-interface that is integrated across the DVD recorder and set top box subsystems, enabling a reliable, uncomplicated user experience.

The Activa 100/150 based DVB+DVDR and ATSC+DVDR reference designs are now sampling to customers worldwide.