Multimedia Electronic Imaging Makes Strides

The Heinrich Hertz Institut in Berlin has developed a video decoder chip that takes image data and prepares it for display in high-definition television systems.
The HDTV-MPEG2 video decoder chip is being implemented in cooperation with Fujitsu Mikroelectronik GmbH and Chemnitz-Zwickau Technical University in Germany. The chip will find its way into the US and Japanese equipment markets.
The HDTV decoder chips feature a 0.35-µm gate-array technology. The data rate of the new chip is four times higher than commercially available MPEG-2 standard TV video decoders, according to the institute.