STMicroelectronics to Innovate Consumer TV User Experience
Achieved unrivaled broadband home entertainment performance

Multi-screen convergence through innovative architecture,
A perfect internet experience, providing the best Faroudja™ video quality

Korea, September 14, 2011 – STMicroelectronics ( www.st.com ), a world-leading integrated semiconductor company and a global leader in digital set-top boxes and TV ICs, announced details of a next-generation interactive broadband home entertainment platform that will revolutionize the connected home by providing users with the best performance to support a more personalized and social interactive viewing experience through stunning 3D graphics and easy smart navigation under ultra-low power conditions.

The integrated SoC for ultra-high-performance digital set-top boxes and digital TVs provides the industry's most interactive, powerful, and secure architecture by supporting not only superior operational performance but also value-added services and comprehensive broadband. The latest home entertainment platforms have opened new horizons for operators and enable the delivery of new services, including full social networking capabilities. Because the architecture is flexible and comprehensive, it is easy to customize and supports user interaction for major applications through 3D graphics and high-speed processors, such as networking services, free or paid applications, multiplayer games, web entertainment, audio/video streaming, and social video conferencing (allowing two or more groups to interact while watching sports programs).

This latest platform is based on an embedded high-performance, low-power multi-core ARM® Cortex A9 processor and provides an unprecedentedly energy-efficient broadband home entertainment system that enables the execution of multiple applications without compromising Full HD video quality. Furthermore, this innovative solution is scalable to support the development of open standard application frameworks built through HTML5, Google Android, Adobe Air, and others.

As the concept and demand for TV and rich web entertainment change rapidly, consumers are demanding that operators provide a wider variety of broadcasting or broadband services. Innovative broadband home entertainment platforms meet these demands by supporting users to seamlessly utilize web content and applications across TVs, mobile phones, tablets, and PCs through multi-screen convergence capabilities.

“ST’s latest broadband home entertainment products establish a new level of consumer experience as the industry’s most powerful combination of performance, scalable architecture, and a rich software ecosystem,” said Philippe Lambinet, Senior Vice President and General Manager of ST’s Home Entertainment and Display business unit. “It is expected that more than 38% of flat-panel TVs shipped in 2013 will be connected to the Internet via TV-based browsers1.” “By building the first platform that provides interactive performance integrating new connectivity options with traditional services and unrivaled features, ST supports operators and Content Service Providers (CSPs) in delivering rich value-added services to subscribers, while enabling TV manufacturers to fully leverage the expansion of the multimedia ecosystem to offer new services and enhanced user experiences,” he said.

This latest generation broadband home entertainment platform is based on an ARM Cortex A9 dual-core CPU that provides up to 8500 DMIPS (Dhyrstone Million Instructions Per Second) of performance.

Higher quality bitstreaming is achieved through an HD 1080p30/720p60 video encoder that provides video preprocessing capabilities. Leveraging years of experience with Faroudja™ quality, this offers features such as digital noise reduction, automatic film mode detection, high-quality rescaling, and image quality enhancement related to contrast, sharpness, and color.

ST enhances the user experience through theater-quality architectural graphics that improve resolution, provides natural user interaction by supporting perfect projection video, and supports perfect 3D graphics and 3DTV EPG.

In addition, this platform provides multi-screen convergence features for home networks, server-client, multimedia sharing, location mobility, and remote UI live TV.

ST's latest broadband platform is currently being provided to key customers as samples and is scheduled for mass production supply in 2012.