Philips Reinforces Its Dominance in Prestigious In-Car Entertainment System Solutions With New Car Radio Chip

    SAN JOSE, Calif.--Jan. 28, 2003--Royal Philips Electronics today introduced its car radio enhanced selectivity tuner, the TEF6860 -- a unique new tuner IC that meets the exacting performance demands of the world's leading automobile manufacturers. Philips' TEF6860 tuner IC alleviates many of the annoying reception problems still associated with car radios, such as adjacent channel interference, AM signal fading, background interference and erratic channel-locking in poor reception areas.
    The TEF6860, which is the latest product in the PACS (Precision Adjacent Channel Selectivity) family builds on the technology that has made Philips the leading supplier of car radio tuner ICs, and sets yet another new standard for in-car entertainment systems. PACS is the worldwide de-facto standard for high quality car radio reception, and the TEF6860 further improves radio and audio performance, reduces the number and cost of external parts, and achieves exceptionally low power dissipation.
    "As with all of the products of our PACS family, the TEF6860 tuner IC is quickly becoming the industry reference point for car-radio design," said Pascal Langlois, vice-president and general manager, global market segment automotive, Philips Semiconductors. "BMW, one of the most advanced and visionary car manufacturers in the world, is using our PACS products. Relationships such as this one with BMW encourage us to extend our PACS offerings."
    The TEF6860 tuner IC receives and demodulates AM, FM and weather-band broadcasts and is compatible with both digital and analog audio processors. The key to its exceptional FM broadcast reception is an on-chip FM channel selection filter that features continuously variable bandwidth. Dynamically controlled via a programmable bandwidth control algorithm that takes into account adjacent channel information, FM deviation, de-tuning and signal level, Philips' unique FM filter fine-tunes the elimination of adjacent channel interference, even when adjacent channels are at much higher received signal strengths than the selected channel. The result is much lower distortion and higher selectivity, with the added benefit of one less ceramic filter needed in the application.
    The TEF6860 is manufactured in Philips' QUBiC4 BiCMOS semiconductor technology and is housed in a LQFP64 package.

    Pricing and Availability

    The TEF6860 is currently sampling with volume production scheduled for Q4 2004. The TEF6860 is priced at US$3.50 per unit in quantities over 10,000 units.

    About Philips

    Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of $28.8 billion (EUR 32.3 billion) in 2001. It is a global leader in color television sets, lighting, electric shavers, medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, and one-chip TV products. Its 184,000 employees in more than 60 countries are active in the areas of lighting, consumer electronics, domestic appliances, components, semiconductors, and medical systems. Philips is quoted on the NYSE (symbol: PHG), London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and other stock exchanges. News from Philips is located at www.semiconductors.philips.com