A Fremont, California, company has released a new chipset that would allow set-top boxes to play MP3 audio files, the popular but controversial format used to distribute music on the Internet.
ESS Technology said its new chipset for set-top box manufacturers will help MP3 become a standard component of consumer audio electronics.
"We believe that we can deliver this function to the mass market at a significant cost advantage," said Johnston Chen, vice president of consumer products for ESS, which develops semiconductor systems for PC and consumer markets worldwide. The company, which announced its plans Friday, did not name manufacturers that plan to use the chipset.
Some set-top products, including all of Microsoft's WebTV models, already include support for MP3. Boxes by another box maker, Scientific-Atlanta, do not.
Chen said MP3, formally known as the Motion Picture Experts Group audio layer 3, has become the de facto standard in digital music distribution and said his company plans to make support for the format a standard part of its chips for Internet and consumer appliances. MP3 supporters maintain that more hardware support will mean further momentum for the format in consumer products.
MP3 compresses music files at near-CD quality for easy transmission to Internet-connected computer devices.
Many of the available songs are unauthorized copies of copyrighted music, however. So the recording industry is trying to replace it with an industry-controlled alternative, the Secure Digital Music Initiative. MP3 advocates say the recording industry wants to maintain its stranglehold on the music-distribution business.
Set-top box manufacturers would use ESS's chipset, ES4280, to build standard set-top functions like Web browsing and email into their set-top box products. Consumers attach set-tops to their TVs and a phone line to view Internet content on the screen.
In addition to MP3, the new product supports audio formats such as Real Audio and Microsoft's Windows Media Player. The new ESS chipset can also play back MP3 music stored on CDs, which the company said is increasingly popular in Asia.
That is one reason ESS will target the Chinese set-top manufacturing market, said the company's chief financial officer, Dale Lindly. "China is a better opportunity because of our infrastructure, existing relationships -- and they're at an early stage in the market."
Lindly said the new chipset will help to ensure a low-cost, MP3-compatible solution for box manufacturers that will, in turn, drive down the cost of Internet-capable MP3-compatible set-top hardware.
That's key to the further entrenchment of MP3, said Michael Robertson, president and CEO of MP3.com, a major clearinghouse for MP3 information on the Web.
"This illustrates the point that MP3 has international support, and that's going to win in the long run," Robertson said. "If the hardware out there plays MP3 files, then there you go."
