This is the week of Computex Taipei, at which you can see wonders such as an HDMI switch (from TWNTech; www.TWNTech.com), which allows you to route any one of up to eight HDMI sources to a display containing only one HDMI jack. That’s an obviously useful stop-gap until HDTVs grow an adequate number of HDMI inputs (in the short run) or the point-to-point model of the current HDMI standard is replaced with a media network (in the longer run).

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

That’s on the big-screen side. On the mini side is what Xceive Corporation (www.xceive.com) calls "the world’s smallest high-definition television," which it’s introducing at Computex.

The company’s "Breckenridge" reference design for transportable and other small-screen TVs is based on Xceive’s highly integrated XC5000 hybrid silicon tuner (with on-board DSP controller), which can receive all 18 ATSC formats, as well as NTSC signals, via terrestrial broadcasting or cable. The footprint is very small, with TV main board measuring only 2.75 by 4.75 inches.

quot;The small form factor of this 7-inch high definition television clearly presents huge challenges both in size and performance from inexpensive antenni (sic)," said Robert Lin, general manager of MStar China. "The XC5000 solves both problems by providing an incredibly small 7mm by 7mm form factor that provides performance improvements that compensate for the weaker, smaller antenni."

Xceive VP of marketing Neil Mitchell said the combination of the XC5000 tuner and the efforts of the company’s system-on-chip partner are enabling a new class of television products not seen previously. He predicted that the Breckenridge reference design will allow customers to bring products to market this year.

Breckenridge uses an integrated 7-inch, 16:9 screen, and that’s where the definition of this high-definition TV gets fuzzy. The TV is high-def in the sense that it can receive HD signals, but the 7-inch display will only show Wide VGA (800×480) at best. (Information about the screen format was not available, but 7-inch screens with more than 800×480 are not readily available, and most have significantly less resolution than that.)

So, when you push the HD elephant through a video funnel to get what is, at best, a standard-definition image, can you legitimately call your result an HDTV? No, you can’t. Which is not to say that Xceive and its partners haven’t put together a very impressive solution on the electronics side.