Hyundai plans for Scottish set-top boxes Svetlana Josifovska
Hyundai is planning to start manufacturing digital TV set-top boxes in Scotland, endorsing Britain's position as the leading European centre for set-top box production.
The Korean electronics group has not decided whether to build its own factory and might address the manufacturing through a partnership with another consumer electronics maker in the region. An official announcement is expected within the next two weeks from Digital Video Systems (DVS), the set-top box division of Hyundai Electronics America, which will undertake this activity.
"It could very well be Hyundai's own manufacturing facility or it could be contracted through a third party," said one company source.
According to the source, this move is independent of the wafer fab that Hyundai is rumoured to be planning, but has yet to decide upon.
Hyundai already has set-top box manufacturing facilities in Korea and the US. But as it the digital television revolution seems to be taking off rapidly in Europe and Hyundai keeps entering agreements with various European digital TV operators, the need for a local manufacturing facility is also growing.
One of its latest announcements was with NetHold, the international digital TV operator which recently merged its European activities with Canal+. The agreement is for the supply of up to 60,000 set-top boxes per month on an indefinite basis. First shipment is expected before the end of 1996.
Hyundai is well equipped for the manufacturing of cable and satellite digital set-top boxes with its expertise in semiconductor fabrication and MPEG-2 decoder chips, QPSK and QAM demodulation chips and DVB compliant chipsets, mainly supplied by its Odeum division. The company also has a DVB collaboration with Symbionics the Cambridge design-house.
As well as local suppliers Pace Micro Technology and Digi Media Vision, Japanese firms Sony and Matsushita are manufacturing or planning to manufacture set-top boxes in the UK.