New Technology Could Make HDTV Cheaper

Saying that it could lead to a cheaper way of producing high-definition television sets, Japan’s Hitachi corporation and Equator Technologies of the U.S. have announced the deve

lopment of a new processor, capable of billions of calculations per second, that will allow HDTV to be delivered via upgradable software rather than through fixed hardware. The companies say that they have begun shipping samples of the $40 processor, called MAP-CA, which, they claim, “sets a new world standard for cost-effective image computing.”