Little Prospect for High-Frame-Rate UHD Decoders ‘Anytime Soon,’ Says Strategy Analytics

Taiwanese chipmakers dominate the market for Ultra HD TV chipsets, “but their position is being challenged by a number of fabless semiconductor vendors across North America and China,” Strategy Analytics said Tuesday. U.S.-based suppliers such as Marvell Technology and Sigma Designs are among “a group of vendors that are implementing new designs to support next generation Ultra HD TV features and standards,” it said. The system-on-a-chip (SoC) market for 4K TVs is highly competitive and dominated by Taiwanese vendors MediaTek, MStar and Novatek, it said. Within the SoC market itself, devices “are now commonplace” for what the European Broadcasting Union defines as Phase 1 of Ultra HD, meaning devices that support HEVC’s Main10 profile at 60 frames a second, with HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 support, it said. A “handful” of suppliers have devices that support Phase 2, with features such as high dynamic range and BT.2020 colorimetry, it said. More suppliers “are expected to implement these features later in 2015 and early 2016,” it said. Few if any suppliers have plans to introduce SoCs with high-frame-rate support “anytime soon,” because 4K at 120 frames a second carries “the largest potential cost impact on Ultra HD TV decoders,” it said. "Silicon with support for internal HDR decoding is slowly emerging but it may take increased availability of HDR content and 10 bit panels before the majority of silicon vendors jump in," said David Watkins, Strategy Analytics service director-connected home devices. His findings are in a report on the impact of Ultra HD on TV SoCs.