CrestaTech, a company that provides software defined Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) solution; fully programmable to work with the widest variety of wireless standards has just launched new CrestaTV Universal Broadband Receiver technology for Region free PCTV.

 

According to the company, the new technology combines a programmable RF IC and software that will allow PCs to receive region free, live analog or digital TV broadcast, radio and GPS signals.

 

The announcement comes as a great opportunity for people to view TV on their PCs, whether they’re at home or on-the-go.

 

“Various mobile TV technologies have been introduced, yet they are too standard-specific to enable broad spread adoption,” said George Haber, president and chief executive officer at CrestaTech.

 

“CrestaTV programmable software and hardware brings together a novel combination of TV, radio and GPS reception that will take the TV out of the living room and put it into people’s hands. Imagine watching live TV broadcasts of election night, sports events or favorite shows and interacting with your friends on the web from your local coffee shop or wherever your laptop takes you.”

 

Founded in 2005, CrestaTech’s first product, CrestaTV Universal Broadband Receiver, supports region free PC TV, radio and GPS, and is fully configurable to work with any PC platform and support any analog and digital TV broadcast, radio and GPS. The company works with a focus to turn the laptop into a truly mobile media center, where consumers can experience Internet with broadcast television.

 

By utilizing CrestaTV Universal Broadband Receiver technology, system manufacturers can now have a cost-effective, simple silicon solution that supports all major standards via a programmable analog IC and software based signal processing.

 

This gives them an opportunity to standardize on a system design regardless of the geographic region, thus reducing costs of the overall system.

 

CrestaTV is comprised of the CTC-200/201 programmable RF and Interface IC and multi-threaded signal processing software. The total solution utilizes only 500mW of power under maximum load. Supported frequencies include 42-864MHz and L1 band. With such flexibility, OEMs can implement CrestaTV on PCI express cards for desktops and PCI mini-express cards or USB TV sticks for laptops.

 

CrestaTech offers a suite of companion software applications, CrestaWare, that provides fast channel scanning, enhanced reception and TV and radio tower geo-location and more, as well as an open platform for the development of social media and user generated content programs.

 

“CrestaTV universal broadband receiver technology has the potential to make PCTV a mass consumer capability versus a niche, enthusiast feature as it is today,” said Haber.

 

“PCTV is the first frontier, but since programmable broadband technology is so flexible and multi-core processors are improving every day, CrestaTech plans to exploit emerging communications protocols like Wimax, Wi-Fi 2.0 and even 3G/4G in the future,” added Haber.

 

The company will be demonstrating CrestaTV on a variety of standards in HD live during the CES (News - Alert) 2009 show in Las Vegas.

 

CrestaTV will be available for evaluation in the second quarter of ’09 and the product is expected to reach consumers later in the year, said the company.