Speaking to The Financial Express, Sage vice-president and GM (consumer products), Dr Nikhil Balram said that the television segment was seeing a rapid transformation, with the focus moving towards enabling high-resolution images, better display and high tube resolutions. The new 100 Hz technology digital televisions for PAL sets, powered with the chip will be capable of scanning images two times higher and faster than in an NTSC or regular PAL format, thereby providing digital clarity, Dr Balram added. The chips are capable of functioning across various formats.

Sage is looking at offering an end-to-end solution to the digital TV segment. The chipset comprises of three ICs -- the FLI2000S NTSC/PAL video decoder, the FLI2200 vider de-interlacer and the FLI2220 video enhancer -- which will be offered either as a total solution or separately. While the decoder takes care of the video signals, the de-interlacer literally de-interlaces the signals, to give total digital processing of the image, weeds out the colour disparities like cross colour, pixellation, jagged image edges, dot crawl and the format conversions. The enhancer sharpens the image. Sage is currently planning a formal launch of the products in the Far-East, China, US and European markets, where it already has a significant presence.

India is also a new and growing market for the company, especially with the introduction of 100 Hz technology television sets in the country. "Faroudja, now a 100 per cent subsidiary of Sage, is already a significant market player in the Far-East (80 per cent market share in Japan) digital interface markets, with its chips for LCD displays, and an overall 20 per cent global share in the analog & digital dual interface markets," Dr Balram revealed.

Incidentally, Faroudja also has a plug`n'play product under its brand name -- Faroudja Picture Plus digital video Processor -- in the US markets priced between $8,000 to $26,000, targeted at the HDTV and home theatre segments. The company would therefore, leverage the brand name of Faroudja and the technical capabilities of Sage for its new range of chipsets, he added. Sage was actively looking at the OEM route for its new video processors and was in talks with several large players in its key markets, he said. Sage recorded revenues of $17 million last year while Faroudja reported revenues of $14 million. Following the acquisition, Sage is expecting its total revenues to go up significantly this year.