Next-generation Si21x7 TV tuner family
13 August 2013
Silicon Labs introduced a new family of silicon TV tuners that supports all worldwide terrestrial and cable TV standards.
Silicon Labs introduced a new family of silicon TV tuners that supports all worldwide terrestrial and cable TV standards.
The new Si21x7 tuner family provides TV and set-top box (STB) makers with field-proven, global performance based on five generations of patented architectural enhancements. The Si21x7 family includes five products optimised for hybrid analogue/digital iDTVs, analogue-only TVs, portable TVs, DVD and Blu-ray recorders, and terrestrial and cable STBs.
The Si21x7 TV tuner family enhances performance in several key areas. The Si21x7 tuners improve noise figure (NF) across all bands, return loss for a given NF, channel selectivity in the presence of terrestrial blockers and in a fully loaded and/or tilted cable spectrum, and linearity over an extended RF input power range. Improvements in these key areas deliver enhanced reception of terrestrial or cable broadcasts across a broad variety of real-world field conditions, and they extend Silicon Labs’ lead in TV tuner performance over competing solutions.
The highly integrated Si21x7 tuners are designed to enable the lowest BOM cost of any silicon TV tuner solution in mass production. The Si21x7 tuners require no external balanced-to-unbalanced transformer (balun) on the RF input, which significantly reduces system cost and complexity without performance degradation. In addition, the Si21x7 TV tuners integrate all tracking filter inductors, and they eliminate the need for inductive power supply filtering, thanks to built-in high supply ripple tolerance, a key consideration for on-board designs.
An integrated power-on reset monitor and optional single 3.3 V power supply operation further reduce system cost. Moreover, the Si21x7 tuners exhibit enhanced electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection and performance on pins critical to TV module designs, removing the need for costly ESD diodes and reducing BOM cost for Tier 1 TV modules that require higher ESD immunity.
The ultra-low-power Si21x7 TV tuners operate at less than 500 mW, helping manufacturers minimize the power consumption of their TV and STB products and achieve compliance with Energy Star and other green energy standards. Low TV tuner power consumption also helps simplify multi-tuner designs by reducing power supply and thermal requirements.
With the growing prevalence of Wi-Fi and LTE communications in the home, it is becoming increasingly important for TV designers to consider the TV tuner’s ability to reject these RF signals, which can interfere with TV reception. The Si21x7 TV tuner architecture addresses this need by offering high rejection of Wi-Fi and LTE signals without requiring external filtering components. This built-in Wi-Fi/LTE signal immunity makes the Si21x7 tuners an ideal solution for smart/connected TVs with integrated Wi-Fi and LTE radios.
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