A new TV prototype capable of pausing live TV broadcasts without the use of a hard disk drive is about to debut, according to industry sources, as early as next month at IFA, the world's largest consumer electronics trade show in Berlin. Commercial products are expected to reach the consumer market later this year or early 2008.

Without revealing manufacturers currently developing Pause TV, several consumer chip vendors have told press that Pause TV represents a new product category that is being promoted to the current TV market. Magnum Semiconductor already has a Pause TV reference design and is talking with several customers, according to the company.

"A pause TV won't record a full movie, but it enables 'pause' and 'replay'—some of the most popular functions of today's personal video recorders" (PVR), said Magnum CEO Jack Guedj. Added Mark Singer, Magnum's director of corporate marketing: "Pause TV will add to the TV set the first new, everyday feature in a long time."

While Mobilygen has yet to launch a Pause TV reference platform, Chris Day, senior vice president sales and marketing at Mobilygen, acknowledged that it plans to offer OEMs a platform with several memory options, including flash memory, DRAM or hard-disk drives.

The Pause TV concept is not new. Day said CE manufacturers have contemplated Pause TV, but for various reasons haven't yet brought it to the market.

Now, two factors favor its introduction: the rapidly sinking price of flash memory and and a new generation of codecs like H.264, that can transcode the video stream and store more video into a limited flash memory.

By: DocMemory
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