STMicroelectronics claims to be Europe’s leading supplier of MPEG-2 and H.264 decoder chips for use in integrated digital TV sets (iDTVs).

Integrated digital TVs with their own digital TV receivers are aimed at the digital terrestrial broadcast market.

In 2007, ST shipped 10 million decoders, primarily from its STi510x family, measured against a total European market of 12 million iDTV sets, according to In-Stat.

The 2007 totals compare with 3.1 million decoders shipped by ST, and iSuppli’s figure of 5.2 million integrated TV sets sold in Europe in 2006.

In December, STMicroelectronics acquired digital TV system-on-chip company Genesis Microchip in a deal valued at $336m.

According to STMicroelectronics, California-based Genesis Microchip has silicon IP which will strengthen its position in the digital TV chipset market, which it sees as one of the fastest growing segments in consumer semiconductors.

Sales of integrated digital TVs are being driven by the planned analogue switch-off across Europe, and mandates such as the French requirement that all TV sets should integrate a digital decoder by March 2008.

Additionally, early adoption of the H.264 standard – also known as AVC (Advanced Video Coding) and MPEG-4 Part 10 – as the European high-definition (HD) standard has gained added impetus from a French ruling that by December 2008, all ‘HD-Ready’ TV sets sold in France must integrate a high-definition decoder.

The H.264/AVC standard is a scalable video technology that produces high quality video at lower data rates than other solutions, and can be used in applications from HDTV and DVD to 3G (third generation) mobile phones.

“Services broadcast using H.264 use considerably less bandwidth than the widely used MPEG-2 coding scheme, and at a much lower bit rate, allowing broadcasters economically to transmit more high definition programming. Compression efficiency is improved by more than 50%,” said ST.