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Technology Breakthroughs to Drive Strong Growth for PC-TV Tuners and Digital Terrestrial Set Top Boxes (5/7/2004)

High-tech market research firm, In-Stat/MDR (http://www.instat.com) projects that the overall worldwide value of PC-TV Tuner products and Digital Terrestrial set top boxes will grow to more than $3.8 Billion (US) in 2008. PC-TV Tuners permit consumers to tune-in television programs, and then capture, store, manage and distribute a wide range of video content on their PCs. PC-TV Tuners are key components in the rapidly emerging market for Entertainment PCs. New, high-performance Entertainment PCs (E-PCs) will set the stage to deliver amazing performance to video, audio, multimedia, and communications applications. Microsoft's Media Center PCs, and new Media Center PC Extenders, will add further oomph to the growth. International markets will be key. Digital Terrestrial set top boxes use similar technology, and will enjoy strong growth in Europe, and will soon blast off in Asia.

The long-awaited convergence of PCs with TVs is now taking shape. "PC-TV Tuners and Digital Terrestrial set top boxes open up new options for consumers," says Gerry Kaufhold, a Principal Analyst with In-Stat/MDR. "The new e-Field antenna, by Dotcast, provides a major breakthrough, because it greatly improves how well consumers can tune in local analog and digital broadcast signals, making TV services more reliable and driving new markets. In the next step for this market, E-PCs will define a class of PCs that include a PC-TV tuner and a hard disk drive, and then evolve to include multiple PC-TV tuners, different types of tuners (analog, digital, cable TV, satellite), massive disk storage, DVD recording capabilities, High Definition (HDTV) video and surround sound audio outputs, HD-DVD recording capabilities, in-home network capabilities, and broadband external network capabilities. The sky truly will be the limit."

In-Stat/MDR has also found that:

Today's PC-TV Tuner market, which is based on PCI Add-In card products, will evolve to include PC-TV Tuner products that are built in to computer motherboards. Intel, Microsoft, HP, Toshiba, NEC, Sony, Dell, Gateway, Shuttle, MSI, and other PC manufacturers, will push multiple PC-TV tuners for both analog TV and digital TV reception onto motherboards of E-PCs, and also on to portable notebook PCs.

Europe will continue to be the leading market for Analog PC-TV Tuner Products as well as for Digital Terrestrial set top boxes. Asia is rapidly climbing toward second place.

Digital Terrestrial set top boxes are finally coming into their own and will consume $1.6 Billion (US) worth of semiconductors and other components during 2008.

The report, "Digital TV Coming Home On PC-TV Tuners And Digital Terrestrial Set Top Boxes" (#IN0401187ME), presents in-depth discussion and analysis of the issues and trends in these markets, along with five year forecasts for eight categories of equipment, in four geographic regions, along with worldwide summaries by category, and regional values for all categories. It includes block diagrams of PC-TV Tuners and Digital Terrestrial set top boxes, profiles of important vendors, Bills-of-Materials and component value forecasts for Digital Terrestrial set top boxes.

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