March 29, 2012, Seoul — STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM), a global semiconductor company in various electronic device applications and a leader in ICs for digital TV and set-top boxes, has unveiled a new family of set-top box system-on-chip products for HD terrestrial, cable IP, and satellite equipment. Operators and retailers can deliver innovative internet-based services to price-sensitive markets through the new product family.
The core of the latest ST product family, built with 40nm process technology, is an enhanced processing engine featuring integrated on-chip capabilities, enabling a simplified design for set-top boxes. This technology allows operators to achieve high power efficiency with low-cost memory. Furthermore, this product family will expand market access to dual HD boxes that support connected TV services such as high-definition zappers, personal video recorders, Internet Protocol clients, IPTV, information channels, Over-The-Top (OTT) video, games, catch-up TV, and social networking.
These new devices with outstanding competitiveness have been launched to respond to the increasing purchasing power of emerging countries and to suit the challenging economic environments of developed nations. Operators and retailers capable of providing innovative IP-based services as cost-effective solutions will have challenging growth opportunities in both emerging and developed countries.
Laurent Remont, General Manager of ST’s Connected Home business unit and Vice President of ST Group, stated, “Connected TV brings the best internet and multimedia experience into the living room today, and our new decoder products were developed to enable more people to use these capabilities.” He added, “This latest product line is fully compatible with all satellite, cable, IPTV, and terrestrial derivatives.” “In addition, these latest devices expand our successful portfolio of mid-range devices and offer the benefits of high-definition Faroudja™ video, 3D TV support, connectivity, and support for the latest CAS such as NSK2 or NOCS3,” they stated.
The new devices support a wide range of HD broadcast and multimedia codecs, hybrid and IP standards, the latest security and content protection standards, and critical middleware stacks from leading providers. All devices in this product family offer the latest eco-friendly features, such as the latest generation of energy-efficient Ethernet and a 0.5W standby mode with fast resume capabilities. Code-compatible with the widely used STi7105, the new devices enable rapid porting of existing software, allowing customers to upgrade their product platforms at minimal cost.
The new product family enhances the flexibility of equipment manufacturers, and operators can reduce costs through pin compatibility between two decoder-only chips and related packages containing decoders, cables, and satellite or terrestrial demodulators. Consequently, designers can develop products targeting diverse market segments while benefiting from hardware commonality that reduces costs and time-to-market.
The devices belonging to the new product group are as follows.
• STiH207 decoder suitable for IP client, zapper, and personal video recorder applications
• The STiH237 provides an integrated DVB-S2 (Digital Video Broadcast-Satellite 2) demodulator and is suitable for satellite zapper boxes.
• The STiH239 integrates a dual DVB-S2 and HD PIP (picture-in-picture) set-top box for satellite personal video recorders.
• STiH273 and STiH223 include DVB-T (digital-terrestrial) and DVB-C (digital-cable) annex A/B/C demodulation
• The STiH207 decoder, which adds support for 1080p60 decoding, Dual HD PIP, and 3D TV MVC (Multiview Video Codec), is compatible with STiH239, STiH237, or STiH273.
STiH207, STiH237, STiH239, and STiH273 are currently being sampled to select customers in 27 x 27mm BGA packages.