Aiming at the emerging portable digital TV market, Microtune Inc. announced a new tuner chip that enables digital TV in PC notebooks, portable TVs, tuner sticks, portable DVD players and other small devices that frequently operate on battery power.

The MicroTuner MT2130 allows any equipped device to display both analog and digital TV across cable or off-air broadcasts, to time-shift programs, and to capture video for multimedia applications.

Even modest improvements in IC power consumption are welcome in portable applications. The new tuner draws 20% less power than Microtune’s flagship MT2131 analog/digital/cable tuner.

It is engineered with excellent sensitivity to receive weak signals and to compensate for the small, built-in antennas typical of portable products. The new tuner also incorporates Microtune’s unique ClearTune filtering technology, which increases immunity to interference from adjacent channels.

Microtune President and CEO James A. Fontaine said “By deploying the MT2130 chip, our customers can differentiate their portable products by offering superior TV reception across the analog and digital broadcasts that exist today.”