PC Cardmakers Chipping Away At Digital TV
By Evan Blackwell
from the April 16, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
There appears to be significant appeal for the ability to watch digital broadcast content from desktop PCs. The demand has helped foster the emergence of datacasting, and the market for PC TV tuner cards could be ready to explode.
Analysts are predicting that the small pocket of players manufacturing the PC tuner cards might see a business boom soon. Cahners In-Stat, which is owned by the same parent as Broadband Week, forecasts that digital TV tuner cards for computers will take off this year, with 50 percent annual growth over the next two years. PC television tuner card sales came in around $473 million in 2000, a figure In-Stat predicts will swell to $1.8 billion by 2005.
In-Stat believes the market will be driven by both analog and digital tuners through 2003, when digital solutions for both terrestrial and satellite digital broadcasts will accelerate.
"We don't see signs of this market slowing down," says Michelle Abraham, a senior analyst for In-Stat's multimedia group. "This application has shown to be really popular in Europe and also in Asia."
Abraham says the potential consumer market for television brought directly to the PC appears to be larger in Europe and Asia. There, the family PC and television more frequently are in the same room than they are in the United States, although U.S. consumers have begun mirroring that trend.
Other drivers include the price differential: cost of a standard definition digital TV set and tuner still remains stubbornly in the four-figure range, while DTV PC cards retail for about $500 or less.
Sparked by the industry confirmation abroad, U.S. tuner card manufacturers are starting to ramp up. AccessDTV, a privately-held company based in Raleigh, N.C., launched its consumer tuner product for the U.S. market in late March. AccessDTV's solution essentially allows the PC to serve as a set-top converter for digital displays. Like most products on the market, AccessDTV's solution includes a PCI-based receiver, an indoor digital TV antenna and cabling.
The company's digital media receiver also comes with some value-added features on a CD-ROM, including a personal program guide, a personal video recording function, a time-shifting feature that allows for pause of live broadcasts and instant messaging and chat functionality.
"There's already an interactive experience present with the home PC," says Dewey Weaver, president of AccessDTV. "We're simply taking interactive TV outside the living room to where that interactive relationship exists."
Hauppauge Digital has been active in the retail-oriented PC tuner market for years. Hauppauge launched the updated version of its newest product, the WinTV-PVR, last October. WinTV-PVR lets customers record TV shows onto their hard disk drive, then play them back to their PC screen or burn the programs onto CD-ROM for playback in home DVD players or in desktop or laptop PCs.
After being one of the early entrants into the space, Hauppauge's sales took a slight hit in the fourth quarter 2000 due to sudden increased competition. Net sales for the year were still around $66 million.
Silicon Valley chipmaker BroadLogic developed a digital receiver for the PC, targeting OEMs such as Hauppauge. BroadLogic's TerraCast DTA-100 uses software-based, high-definition MPEG-2 video and Dolby Digital audio decoders to deliver video and audio without the expense of hardware-based decoders.
Of course in many ways, the success of the PC tuner card market depends on the state of the datacasters such as iBlast, Wavexpress and Dotcast, who continue to ramp up systems. One of their counterparts, Geocast Network Systems, fell victim to the shaky capital investment market and went out of business earlier this year. That hasn't scared off the PC tuner card players.
"We see the demand as being good. Datacasting is going to be a big part of the future," AccessTV's Weaver says. "This is a healthy market that's starting to see a lot of competition."
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