We are in the early stages of a worldwide transition in television broadcasting from analog to digital. In a few places in the world, analog broadcasts have already been switched off; however, most of the world will still require support for legacy broadcasts through 2009, 2012, and even 2015. During this transition period, it is necessary to support both the legacy analog TV standards – NTSC, PAL, and SECAM – as well as the new digital TV standards – DVB-T, ISDB-T, and ATSC. Because of this transition, there will be a multi-year increase in the unit volume shipments both for digital TVs that incorporate both digital and analog reception and also for converter boxes that accept a digital TV input and convert it to an analog TV output for display on a legacy analog TV. The technical challenges for receiving analog or digital TV broadcasts are different, and the challenges increase when both must co-exist. In addition to the technical challenges, the cost of the solution must also be made very low for wide market adoption. Today, almost all TV sets and off-air set-top converter boxes still use surprisingly low-cost tuner modules consisting of hundreds of discrete components and requiring manual tuning (frequency alignment). The first three papers in this session present highly integrated TV tuners to meet both the technical and commercial challenges of the digital TV transition around the world.
