Frontier Silicon announces full support for Hong Kong digital radio market

HONG KONG: Frontier Silicon, the leading supplier of digital radio and connected audio technology, announced the addition of a Chinese User Interface (UI) option to its widely adopted range of digital radio platforms to coincide with the launch of Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB+) services in Hong Kong in November 2011.

When the broadcasting of 18 channels in crystal clear digital technology begins this November, Hong Kong will join the newly launched DAB+ service in Germany and the already established markets for digital radio in UK, Switzerland, Australia, Denmark, Norway and Singapore.

The public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), along with three new licensees; Metro Broadcast Corp. Ltd, Phoenix U Radio Ltd and Digital Broadcasting Corp. Hong Kong Ltd have in total, pledged an investment of nearly HK $1 billion for the first six years of operation and will provide round-the-clock DAB+ services offering the radio audience in Hong Kong new high-quality entertainment and information programmes in multiple languages.

The topography of Hong Kong makes FM broadcasting a challenge which has historically limited the number of radio programmes available to consumers. The choice of DAB+ allows broadcasters to provide a broad range of new services with good quality reception within a limited radio spectrum.

The newly released localised solution from Frontier implements a rich character set consisting of 16,000 unique Chinese characters. The UI allows end-users to navigate through station names, radio menus, and view DLS messages in the Chinese language ensuring that digital radio is accessible to all consumers in the SAR.

“We are delighted that Frontier Silicon, the company that has shipped more than 13 million DAB/DAB+ solutions, has evolved their technology with the addition of the Chinese character set,” said Simon Heung from DBC. “With Frontier providing the Venus2i-C then we broadcasters can be sure that listeners to Hong Kong’s exciting new digital radio services will be able to enjoy them through highly dependable radios.“

“At Frontier we have been investing in digital radio for over ten years and during this time we have developed a substantial engineering and sales presence in the Hong Kong SAR employing over forty highly skilled local staff.” commented Anthony Sethill, CEO, Frontier Silicon. “The launch of DAB/DAB+ in Hong Kong is yet another step towards this established standard becoming the world’s most widely adopted digital radio standard, and this latest development of our technology underlines our commitment in this market globally.”

Initially, the Venus 2i-C platform with the Chinese UI is implemented using Frontier Silicon’s Verona digital radio module using a 128 x 32 pixel display with icons and running the latest DAB 4.3 software SDK. The entire 16,000 character set is stored in the on-board memory of the module which dispenses with the requirement to have a fixed and inflexible LCD driver containing a specific subset of the character set. This software is also applicable to any current DAB/DAB+ chipset or module from Frontier.