Digital TV boom enters the automotive market

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Digital TV boom enters the automotive market [Copy link]

Introduction
The craze for digital TV applications has spread to various application markets, big and small, and the automotive market will certainly not be forgotten. Volv has already launched new models that integrate digital audio and video equipment products. World-class automakers such as Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Peugeot, and Citroen are also expected to include digital TV as a feature in their new models. Some automakers have even included digital TV as an optional feature in their new models. Its market development is worth looking forward to, including: the market for car digital set-top boxes (STBs) and tuners will also have considerable development potential.

1. The budding car digital TV market
Since the topic of digital TV has attracted attention, car TV manufacturers have been overjoyed and have begun to gain more confidence in the car TV industry. In addition, the use of in-car space is becoming more and more extensive, so it can be expected that the future development of car TV will definitely be worth looking forward to.

Simply put, the main needs of car audio and video systems are "listening" and "watching". In the past, radios and audio systems only focused on "listening", but now the rise of car TV and DVD audio and video markets has also driven the market demand for "watching". In the future, watching TV in the car will be as common as watching TV at home.

Although car TV is still in its infancy, car manufacturers have also stated that the future development of car TV will be like car radio and will become a standard product in cars. In addition, in terms of public transportation, the market capacity of car TV in this regard is limited.

Currently, some car models such as BMW and Audi are already equipped with car TV reception systems, and other car manufacturers have installed car LCD displays for DVD playback on some mid-to-high-end cars. These models can be converted into a car TV by simply adding a TV receiver and replacing the receiving antenna.

Generally, car TV industry experts say that although the car TV market will grow at a doubling rate, it will take another 2-3 years for the entire market to reach a certain growth rate, especially in the field of household vehicles. At present, car digital TV is more popular in Europe, China and Taiwan. According to a research report by DisplaySearch, the number of cars equipped with digital TVs in the world exceeded 10 million in 2005, and the market is expected to grow by 10%-15% in 2006.

2. Analysis of the application market of car digital TV
Due to the limited number of public transportation facilities, the market capacity of car TV in public transportation is also relatively limited. The industry unanimously believes that household vehicles are the most promising market for car digital TV. In view of the rapid growth of the automobile market, the integration of multi-functions in car TV has become a consensus in the automobile industry and the automotive electronics industry, and will integrate additional functions such as audio, DVD audio and video.

In addition, you can also watch real-time traffic information, which requires operators to provide corresponding value-added services. In the future, TV will become a new function of integrated car infotainment systems, and car satellite navigation devices with dynamic interactive functions and car TV functions will become a hot application.

The provision of richer program content by operators is also a driving force for the market. For example, buses and household vehicles have different requirements for digital TV program content, which requires operators to provide rich programs and add real-time news programs such as traffic, stock market intelligence, sports news, etc. that car owners are more interested in, thereby accelerating the promotion of market demand.

In the face of the installation support measures from vehicle manufacturers or the aftermarket, some Taiwanese car TV and related component manufacturers have begun to prepare for the future and are ready to actively work on the original equipment support for some domestic brand vehicle manufacturers, while other companies have also increased their investment in this regard.

3. Good news for component manufacturers.
If tuners are integrated into car digital TVs in the future, it means that one car TV will need to be equipped with one tuner. A car is usually equipped with more than one TV, which has great market potential. Currently, global car STBs are mainly used to receive European standard wireless TV broadcast signals (Digital Video Broadcast-Terrestri-al; DVB-T). International STB manufacturers such as Motorola and ADB specialize in developing STBs for European standard satellite TV signals (Digital Video Broadcast-Satellite; DVB-S) or European standard cable TV signals (Digital Video Broadcast-Cable; DVB-C) that require decoding. They are not very interested in DVB-T STBs that do not require decoding functions. Therefore, Taiwanese manufacturers have a higher chance of getting involved in car STBs.

However, there are not many manufacturers in Taiwan that are actively developing the field of car STB. On the other hand, industry insiders also pointed out that in the future, car digital TV will integrate different functions with GPRS and DVD players, so if Taiwan STB manufacturers want to win the car STB market, they must develop the picture in picture (PIP) function. Given that Taiwan's current STB manufacturers have weak software design capabilities, it will take some time to improve their technology.

Industry insiders also pointed out that due to the rise of the trend of car STBs, TFT-LCD panel manufacturers have also begun to explore their willingness to cooperate with STB manufacturers. For STB manufacturers, if they can quickly improve their software technology capabilities, their chances of successfully entering the car digital TV market in the future will also increase significantly.

The driving force behind the continued growth of the car TV market comes from three aspects: first, the gradual development and promotion of mobile digital TV projects, and the gradual improvement of network architecture; second, the continuous decline in the cost of car TV set-top boxes and LCD display products; third, high-end car models are already equipped with display screens before leaving the factory, and they can directly purchase set-top boxes, antennas and related matching products from local dealers to realize the function of watching TV.

With the expansion of the automobile consumer market and the growing demand for car audio and video products, car digital mobile TV will surely become a new economic growth point in the TV industry, opening up a very large car electronic consumer market. This development trend has also attracted manufacturers in related industries to enter, including manufacturers entering the car TV market or car audio and video system manufacturers, such as foreign Alpine, Panasonic, Clarion, Siemens VDO, etc. In the future, with the steady progress of digital mobile TV projects in various cities and the improvement of related supporting links, the car TV market will usher in emerging market business opportunities.

4. Set-top box chips and antenna designs present new development trends.　
The most important key to the car digital TV imaging system is the pursuit of high image quality, large screen and digital process; therefore, the most important thing for the car digital TV decoding and conversion system is to be able to stably receive images during fast movement. The sensitive dual antenna design and excellent shock absorption of the car digital TV decoding and conversion box create excellent reception effects, and can maintain stable high-sensitivity reception even at high speeds and on bumpy roads.

In addition, the set-top box plays the role of uploading and downloading in the car digital TV, which includes two parts: front-end receiving and back-end decoding. The front-end mainly includes the tuner and demodulator, while the back-end is mainly for decoding processing. Currently, manufacturers that can provide DVB-T demodulator chip solutions include DiBcom, Philips, etc.; the back-end chip manufacturers are mainly the following: ST, Fujitsu, LSI, NEC, ATI, Philips, Conexant, Ali, etc.

ATI's chips are mainly used in high-end products; ST is positioned in the mid-to-high-end; Fujitsu is in the mid-to-low-profile products, and Ali currently dominates the low-profile product market. In the future, front-end chips will mainly develop in the direction of improving integration and enhancing receiving sensitivity.

The back-end chip will develop towards multifunctionality. Currently, the decoding functions of different receiving methods such as DVB-T, DVD, DVB-S, etc. can be integrated together, so that the reception of multiple different standard signals can be completed on one terminal, which will further promote the growth of product demand.

From the perspective of market trends, there are several directions in the development of back-end chips that are worth paying attention to. The first is low cost: this chip only provides some basic functions. Of course, there are also single-chip solutions that integrate tuners, demodulators and back-end chips to reduce chip or BOM costs; the second is to achieve multi-functional decoding; the third is to develop towards HD decoding chips. From the perspective of chip design, several current standards are considering how to reduce power consumption, thereby reducing substrate size and improving product yield.

Digital TV antennas have low frequency bands, large bandwidths, and signal distribution and strength issues, so the volume becomes a bottleneck in design. Taking the current digital TV antennas of set-top boxes as an example, they are not suitable for carrying around and cannot be used on mobile devices such as mobile phones.

How to use special materials or line types to design lighter, thinner and shorter products, break the design form of digital TV antennas, and use copper wire coil coupling to significantly reduce the height of the antenna. The portable digital TV antenna launched can be placed or attached to the OA, and combined with the mobility feature in the car, it is very convenient to use.

As for hidden digital TV antennas for cars, most of the car antennas on the market are currently installed on the car body. They are exposed antennas, which not only destroy the overall appearance of the car, but are also easy to be stolen. Therefore, the demand for hidden antennas is very urgent. The so-called hidden digital TV antenna for cars is a thin piece that can be directly attached to the windshield. It has a large bandwidth and adopts a modular concept. It is easy to disassemble and repair, suitable for DIY, and develops products with higher added value, making the car digital TV market more potential for development.

For digital TV in cars to be popularized on a large scale, the terrestrial transmission standards need to be truly implemented. Currently, although the terrestrial transmission standards for digital TV have entered the industrialization stage, their standards include: DMB-T, ADTB-T, TiMi, DVB-T and many other standards.

area	Main content
Europe	1. The spread of broadcasting standard advantages has led to the globalization of DVB-H. The digital broadcasting standards formulated by Europe have become the global mainstream. In terms of video broadcasting, the regions that adopt DVB-T (terrestrial digital video broadcasting) as the digital standard include Taiwan, Singapore and Brazil in addition to Europe. 2. On the other hand, the ATSC dominated by the United States is limited to the United States and its neighboring Canada and Mexico, plus South Korea and other countries. In addition, the ISDB-T standard adopted by Japan is actually modified based on the European standard. As for audio (radio) broadcasting, the global status of the Eureka 147 standard adopted by pan-European countries is also superior to the US standard IBOC (In B on channel). Therefore, whether it is video or audio broadcasting, European technology has the advantage of global standards.
Japan	1. The mobile TV technologies used include ISDB-T and S-DMB. ISDB-T will start broadcasting mobile broadcasting services in April 2006. As for Mobaho, which adopts the S-DMB standard, mobile TV services have been commercialized in October 2004. 2. ISDB-T technology divides each 6MHz channel into 13 frequency bands, and uses 12 of them to broadcast home digital TV. Since ISDB-T has good mobile reception, car TV can directly receive the same content as home TV. As for handheld devices, they receive programs broadcasted by the remaining 1 frequency band of ISDB-T.
USA	1. The mobile multimedia spectrum is opened up, and the content industry is formed. Among the current global digital TV terrestrial broadcasting standards, Europe's DVB-T and Japan's ISDB-T both include mobile reception in the specifications, while the ATSC standard adopted by the United States is only suitable for fixed reception. 2. The American TV standard cannot be applied to mobile reception, but the audio-visual industry led by Hollywood creates a huge amount of program content every year. Therefore, in addition to home TV, the American content industry is also actively expanding the air-pressure platform, among which mobile TV is the area that content companies are most actively investing in.
South Korea	Actively promote T-DMB technology abroad to drive hardware export opportunities. The mobile TV technology used by South Korea is mainly DMB, including T-DMB for terrestrial broadcasting and S-DMB satellite mobile TV services. South Korea is pushing for T-DMB, which is used domestically, to become an international standard in the future. Its expansion in Europe has been successful and will bring huge business opportunities to South Korea's mobile phone and equipment industries in the future.

Table 1 Introduction to DMB-T, ADTB-T, TiMi and DVB-T standards (Source: Digitimes Research)

5. Issues that need to be addressed urgently in the development of the car TV industry

In the past two years, Taiwan's car TV industry has developed very rapidly, but because the car TV market has just been activated and has not yet entered the industrialization stage, Taiwan still needs to overcome several obstacles when developing the car TV industry, including: standards, encryption, operating mechanisms and integrated services. Before these issues are resolved or determined, they will inevitably directly affect the development of the entire car TV industry.

Standards. The so-called standard dispute is actually a dispute over the interests of various manufacturers. Since it is a dispute over interests, it is difficult to balance from the government's perspective. At present, the government has a relatively open attitude towards the three standards for car digital TVs, allowing the market to develop freely and then evaluating which standard to adopt based on market conditions. Therefore, it can be predicted that in the short term, the government is unlikely to jump out and set standards, especially for car digital TVs, which have just emerged.

On the other hand, because the final standard has not yet been determined, many manufacturers are unwilling to invest too much resources in the early stage. Now, in order to seize the market, some manufacturers are using the actual sales of products as a breakthrough when the standard has not yet been determined. However, the lack of standards has a great impact on the car TV market for family cars, because the car TV for private vehicles is paid by consumers. The lack of standards increases the risk of personal investment and inevitably suppresses the demand for car TVs. The car TV market for private vehicles will be the hope for the development of the automotive electronics industry.

Operation mechanism issues. Whether the digital TV network is built by the government or by operators will have different effects on the development of the car TV industry. If the government promotes the construction of the car digital TV network, it can effectively solve the problem of signal reception in various places and realize wireless reception of car TV, which will quickly promote the development of the entire industry. If the operator builds the reception network system, the development of the car TV industry will encounter greater resistance.

Integration of service issues. Whether services suitable for mobile users can be provided is the key to the promotion of car digital TV applications, and the service content currently available is relatively simple. At present, the car TVs used by public transportation vehicles are free and forced to be consumed. News, entertainment, life knowledge, advertisements and other contents are not suitable for consumers. The core of the application of digital TV for active viewing in home vehicles lies in value-added services. Can it provide a rich source of programs? In the future, car TVs will integrate TV, navigation map downloads, traffic diversion, road condition information broadcasts and other contents and functions.