Broadcom announced the expansion of its IP STB family with a range of highly integrated, system-on-a-chip solutions. These new offerings will enable manufacturers to rapidly design and deploy next generation performance- and feature-optimized hybrid cable, terrestrial and DSL IP STB products for the connected digital home. These new products, which offer a streamlined feature set targeting single, multi-format HD decode, including support for China's audio/video standard, will be demonstrated at this week's China Content Broadcasting Network Conference in Booth #3501.

According to In-Stat market research, the potential global market for telecommunications television subscribers is expected to grow three-fold by the end of 2012, from 23 million subscribers in 2008 to approximately 71.6 million subscribers with over 40 percent of telco TV subscribers in the Asia/Pacific region. "Telco TV continues to grow as new operators launch services in conjunction with existing players increasing their footprint, penetration, content and range of services," said Michelle Abraham, principal analyst at In-Stat.

Service providers are demanding a broader range of STB solutions to address whole-home connected entertainment environments that include a high-end media gateway in the living room along with mid-to-lower-range thin client devices in "second" rooms such as bedrooms or dens. Consumers expect more advanced features from their set-top boxes, such as shared/networked DVR capabilities, that allow multiple users to store, time shift or access content from media servers or residential gateways for playback on STBs anywhere in the home. Additionally, both service providers and users demand support for more intuitive interfaces, guides and a host of new applications with a consistent look and feel across a range of STBs in the home.

To address this growing market opportunity, Broadcom announces an expanded SoC family that builds upon the field proven and successful BCM7405 premium IPTV chip. These new devices deliver complementary, streamlined feature sets for mid-range and thin client applications, supporting single or multi-room TV delivery and distribution. With both media server and thin client devices using this chip family, STB manufacturers can leverage a common hardware and software architecture, accelerating time-to-market for multi-room solutions. This product family also enables service providers additional options to deploy single or networked multi-room IPTV services, from basic standard definition and HD download and play, to streaming VoD, Web browsing and widget support for whole-home DVR and other advanced media sharing applications.

At CCBN 2009, Broadcom is introducing two new HD solutions, the BCM7205 and BCM7206, and a new SD solution, the BCM7466. All chips feature multi-format video support with an MPEG-4/VC-1/MPEG-2/AVS-compliant HD video decoder. The BCM7205/BCM7206 solutions are designed for the needs of the mid-range single HD decode STB, providing significant bill-of-materials cost optimizations for this segment of the market. Similarly, the BCM7466 is designed for the entry-level SD output segment of the STB market.

Technical Information

The BCM7205 and BCM7206 are multi-format IPTV SoCs that support up to 1080p resolution and are optimized to support the essential features of a single HD decode IP or hybrid IP set-top box. They combine a high performance 1100-DMIPS MIPS32(R)/MIPS16e class CPU, high-speed 2D graphics processor, a very flexible data transport processor, an MPEG-4/VC-1/MPEG-2/AVS-compliant video decoder, a programmable audio decoder, six video digital-to-analog converters, stereo high fidelity DACs, HDMIv.1.3/HDCP1.2 support, a Fast Ethernet port with an integrated physical layer device, dual USB 2.0 ports, a PCI 2.3 expansion bus, a high-speed 32-bit DDR2 800MHz memory controller and a peripheral control unit that provides a variety of set-top box input/output control functions. The BCM7205 also supports a SATA-II port.

The BCM7466 has similar capabilities as the BCM7206 but is optimized to support SD and ED output resolutions, HDMIv.1.3/HDCP1.2 (up to 480p/576p) and video DAC support for S-video and composite video. It also supports dual-SD decode with picture-in-picture output.

The three new chips support DVR time shift functionality via USB-attached storage or NAND flash.

Availability and Pricing

The BCM7205, BCM7206 and BCM7466 IP set-top box single-chip solutions are now sampling to early access customers. Pricing is available upon request.