Imagine for a second if you will.. a laptop which you can take anywhere around the world that’s capable of picking up GPS signals, radio signals, and all regional analog/digital TV signals – all made possible thanks to a single programmable RF IC (and some software). Sounds pretty cool right? Well all this will soon be a reality thanks to CrestaTech’s CrestaTV Universal Broadband Receiver technology. The company announced on Tuesday that reference designs and samples of the technology were now available for PC manufacturers.

With CrestaTV Universal Broadband Receiver Technology, manufacturers can ship a single TV tuner module which they know will work no matter what country the device is located in. The integrated GPS receiver helps the system figure out which regional channel guide to pull up for the area. 

The receiver itself supports formats including DVBT, ATSC, Cable QAM, NTSC and PAL, along with FM radio and GPS capabilities. CrestaTV is made up of the CTC-200/201 programmable RF and Interface IC as well as multi-threaded signal processing software. Equipment manufacturers can implement CrestaTV on PCI Express cards, PCI mini-express cards, or USB TV modules.

Here’s hoping that the next time I travel around the world, I’ll have a device with the CrestaTV technology embedded.

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