Cheaper DVD multiplayers on the Horizon

Chipset manufacturer Horizon Semiconductors has unveiled what it claims is the first system-on-a-chip enabling dual channel native 1080/60p decoding, encoding and transcoding for devices supporting HD-DVD and Blu-ray formats.

Horizon's Hz7120 HD-DVD/Blu-Ray SoC supports native high-definition 1080/60i and 1080/60p profiles for encoding and decoding as well as audio compression standards such as DTS-HD, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD.

The chipset is provided with a software stack compliant with Blu-ray and HD-DVD specifications and a reference hardware platform which the company said is designed to significantly accelerate the OEM/ODM development cycle.

"Consumers are not sure which player format will prevail, and will wait for a lower cost native 1080p60 universal HD-DVD/Blu-ray playback and recording platform," said Amir Morad, president and chief executive at Horizon Semiconductors.

"Consumers also want the flexibility of watching content wherever they like, and will therefore naturally prefer devices incorporating higher quality, low bit-rate transcoding and integrated iVDR support, as offered in Horizon's Hz7120 SoC."