As the delivery of high-definition (HD) video broadcast becomes more and more prevalent worldwide, products featuring Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) digital signal processing technologies are deploying to the market today. Worldwide TI customers, leveraging the company's commitment to providing flexible, high-performance digital signal processing (DSP) solutions to both the standard-definition (SD) and high-definition broadcast markets, will display their cutting-edge wares at the annual International Broadcasters Conference (IBC) in Amsterdam, September 9-13. For more information, see http://www.ibc.org.

The wide range of new products -- addressing markets including video headend and broadcast encoding/decoding/multiplexing systems -- testifies to the growing momentum of video infrastructure as the transition from SD to HD becomes a reality. IBC is a showcase for these burgeoning markets, allowing many TI customers to demonstrate products powered by TI's software programmable, high-performance DSPs from the TMS320C64x(TM) generation of products.

"TANDBERG Television has utilized TI technology to deliver world-first SD and HD encoders for both MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1. At IBC we will show our complete end-to-end HDTV MPEG-4 AVC system, which is already being deployed by leading broadcasters such as BSkyB, DIRECTV and Premiere. In addition, we will show our award-winning VC-1 and MPEG-4 AVC IPTV system that is being rolled out by telcos around the world," said Carl Furgusson, director of product development, TANDBERG Television. "As the worldwide market for IPTV and HDTV continues to gain momentum, we will continue to leverage the performance of TI DSPs like the 1 GHz TMS320C6414T. This DSP performance allows us to create systems that halve the bandwidth required for broadcast quality TV compared to traditional MPEG-2 compression and enable new business models that help operators to increase return on investment and attract and retain new subscribers."

The TMS320C6414T and TMS320C6415T DSPs are based on the TMS320C64x DSP core and produced on TI's advanced 90-nanometer copper process technology. They are available today at clock rates of 720MHz to 1GHZ and are designed to boost multi-channel density, enhance multi-function flexibility and increase bandwidth for higher frame rates and better resolution. They are also code compatible with TI's powerful 1 GHz TMS320C6455 DSP and are software programmable, giving customers the flexibility to evolve with the ever- changing digital media formats like ITU H.264.

"Use of TI's powerful 1 GHz DSPs has allowed us to quickly implement and rapidly deploy to multiple service providers our internally developed H.264 encode and transcode algorithms," said Chuck Van Dusen, chief technology officer, Tut Systems, Inc. "The high degree of programmability and flexibility allows us to make continued improvements and optimizations in video quality at lower bit rates via simple software upgrades."

The inherent flexibility of DSPs makes them ideal for the video infrastructure market for many reasons. In addition to handling multiple formats and protocols, products featuring TI technology can be equally adept in the HD and SD arenas. TI's commitment to both markets sets it apart in the industry.

"We work with broadcasters to offer encoding and decoding for both HD and SD and we need a partner who can deliver the core technology that addresses both," said Eric Deniau, vice-president of engineering, Envivio. "Today, broadcasters, telcos and enterprises need everything from multimedia broadcasting, IPTV, elearning and the broadcast of mobile, SD and HD television. TI's DSPs allow us to address the high-end of this market with cutting-edge products like Envivio HD Encoders."

Companies like TANDBERG Television, Tut Systems and Envivio will have opportunity to make further advances in video broadcast technology as TI's DSP roadmap for the industry becomes more robust. The TMS320C6455 DSP is the latest breakthrough, offering higher performance, reduced code size plus more on-chip memory and high bandwidth integrated peripherals, including the Serial RapidIO(R) bus for inter-processor communications. Manufacturers using the new C6455 DSP will see a system performance gain due to 2x - 12x boosts in performance and I/O bandwidth, allowing them to integrate more high-bandwidth channels, achieve higher image definition and produce more efficient software easily for faster time-to-market.

"With products like the C6455 DSP, TI continues to build on its commitment to a video infrastructure market that is gaining momentum as it matures," said Pradeep Bardia, marketing manager, video infrastructure solutions, TI. "We are extremely pleased that our customers are able to leverage our technology to create next-generation products that are being deployed today. We look forward to working with them in the future as we deliver greater performance and flexibility with our family of DSPs."

TI will be exhibiting at IBC in booth #1.224.