Ceton Chooses MaxLinear Low-Power Tuners for InfiniTV Multi-Tuner Digital Cable TV Product Line

Ceton’s InfiniTV digital cable TV cards for the PC provide multiple tuners for whole-home entertainment; MaxLinear MxL241SF integrated cable tuner + QAM demodulator device chosen for performance, small size and low power

CARLSBAD, Calif. — MaxLinear Inc. (NYSE: MXL), a leading provider of integrated radio frequency (RF) and mixed-signal integrated circuits for broadband communication applications, today announced that Ceton Corp. has chosen its MxL241SF cable TV tuners for its InfiniTV multi-tuner digital cable TV product line for the PC.

The MxL241SF is the industry’s first “MPEG tuner” a single-die integrated tuner and QAM demodulator IC that is packaged in a 6mm x 6mm 40-pin QFN package and consumes only 450mW of power -a third of the power consumed by stand alone tuners commonly used in cable STBs and TVs.

Ceton is the industry pioneer for multi-tuner PC cards, having invented the world’s first multi-tuner solution for delivering encrypted digital cable television on the PC. Ceton solutions also support network tuners capability, which enables individual tuners on a Ceton InfiniTV to be assigned to additional PCs, bringing live, premium, high-definition cable TV to multiple Windows 7 PCs in the home. The Ceton InfiniTV 4 four-tuner PCIe x1 low profile cards are based on the MxL241SF.

“The response to our InfiniTV 4, with its ability to easily and cost-effectively share multiple channels of premium, HD, digital cable TV services throughout a home, has been tremendous. I’m excited about how Ceton solutions give consumers even more freedom to enjoy their cable services,” said Gary Hammer, Ceton Corp. President & Chief Executive Officer. “MaxLinear with its CMOS tuner technology has been critical to our ability to deliver these compact products with the high performance and low power draw we wanted.”

“The development of the Ceton InfiniTV product line shows the power, component count and board space complexities facing many multi-tuner cable designs today. We developed the MxL241SF to help solve those challenges,” said Brian Sprague, MaxLinear Vice President and General Manager, Broadband and Consumer Products. “We’re glad to be working with Ceton, and that the MxL241SF has contributed to innovation built into the InfiniTV products in a significant way.”

Developed in standard digital CMOS, the MxL241SF combines MaxLinear’s cutting-edge front-end RF technology and Intel Corp.’s proven QAM solution for the cable market. The device tunes to 256 and 64 QAM channels up to 1GHz and provides standard MPEG transport stream output for DOCSIS and video applications while meeting the high performance, low power and small form factor requirements for developing next-generation, multi-tuner cable video gateways and advanced set-top boxes (STBs).

The companies will also work together to build a next-generation whole-home entertainment system based on MaxLinear’s MxL251 dual tuner-demodulator device.