Notebook computer owners may soon be able to watch digital television on their laptops, industry officials said yesterday at the launch of a new converter box that descrambles the signals.
"Technology is increasingly becoming bound up with our everyday lives," said Matthew Miao (
"The smaller and more unobtrusive we can make it the better. Putting storage, computing, digital entertainment and broadband connectivity together is the way of the future."
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Miao was praising a cigarette pack-sized receiver box which plugs into the USB, or universal serial bus, socket of a notebook computer, allowing the user to access digital television channels that are beamed free of charge, or free-to-air.
Five free-to-air channels -- Taiwan Television Enterprise Ltd (TTV,
"The five wireless digital channels will have a soft launch next May and will launch officially in August," said Chen Yue-ching (
The association hopes to boost the number of available channels to 15 as quickly as possible, she said.
The government plans to switch the nation completely to digital television by 2006, but is locked in a dispute about fees and regulations with cable operators who supply television to more than 80 percent of Taiwanese households.
Taiwan has to switch to digital before 2008 when the Olympic Games take place in rival China as the games will be broadcast completely in digital signals.
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"China will be the second largest digital television market in the world," said People First Party (PFP) Legislator Pang Chien-kuo (
The potential market for the device is huge, according to an employee at the manufacturers Twinhan Technology Co (雙漢科技).
"I estimate that more than 50 percent of notebook users will be interested in this digital television function," said Jason Chang (
Due to advances in technology, the box is expected to shrink to half its size by next year, and eventually be offered as a component inside the computer.
The box can also be plugged into the USB socket of a desktop computer, he added.
Twinhan is already manufacturing the box for companies in Germany, the UK, Australia and China. In these countries up to 22 free-to-air channels are already offered, Chang said.
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Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day