ATI Technologies and Samsung Electronics signed an agreement about strategic cooperation and joint development for Samsung’s next generation of digital television platforms late last week.

This new generation of Samsung digital TV’s are to be powered by ATI’s XILLEON and NXTWAVE chips, providing high digital and analogue picture quality, as well as exceptional reception capabilities, allowing consumers to enjoy the ultimate visual experience.

According to Samsung, the company has chosen ATI’s solution for its powerful MPEG decoder, RF signal reception capability, software technologies and some other factors.

ATI has developed a number of well-accepted chips for the digital television market. Some of which include: XILLEON, the world’s first high-definition MPEG decoder system-on-chip; NXT2003, the world’s only single-chip ATSC/OpenCable digital demodulator; and the THEATER 310, ATI’s latest receiver – the performance leader in ATSC (Advance Television Systems Committee), NTSC (National Television Systems Committee) and Digital Cable reception.

The Markham, Ontario-based developer of graphics chips, multimedia and consumer solutions projects consumer products – including DTV and handheld products – to account from 10% to 20% of its revenue in fiscal 2004. ATI’s most recent quarter sales totalled $380.7 million, a little bit less than 10% of which came from the consumer division. TV products account for approximately 40% of consumer division’s sales.

During the most-recent conference call the management of ATI Technologies also indicated that the company is about to sign a similar technology agreement concerning TV products with Sony, a rival of Samsung Electronics.