ALi Announces Set-Top Box Chipsets Supporting Advanced Security at IBC

Monday, August 30th, 2010

M3383, M3603 and M3606 Ready for Volume Shipping in Q3

TAIPEI Taiwan — ALi Corporation (TPE:3041), a leading set-top box (STB) system-on-chip (SoC) solution provider, introduced at IBC 2010 the M3383 and M3603: industry leading, highly integrated and advanced security CA-enabled STB SoC solutions. The company also announced that the two SoCs, together with M3606 featuring CI+ functionality, are ready for volume shipping in Q3 this year. The three solutions each combine on a single chip to offer an HDMI transmitter, Ethernet, MPEG-1/2/4 and H.264 decoder, and many other competitive features. This high degree of integration reduces external parts count, bill of material (BOM) costs, and power requirements while simplifying design and speeding development and time to market.

ALi’s newly launched M3383 and M3603 feature embedded advanced security and are suitable for Pay TV market, while the M3606 featuring CI+ functionality targets high-end retail STB market. The M3383, M3603 and M3606 are flexible total solutions that feature all the major subsystems required to implement digital STB for satellite, terrestrial, cable or IPTVs.

ALi had shipped over 200 million STB chipset units to STB markets. Strong demand from Europe, India, North Africa, Middle East, China and South East Asia has positioned ALi on top of the global DVB-T, DVB-S and DVB-S2 HD SoC FTA markets. Over the years, ALi’s total solution, complete product roadmap and strong technical support have helped secure ALi long and steady partnerships with many customers worldwide.

“ALi’s M3383/M3603/M3606 are designed to address different STB markets. While the M3606 is specifically for the retail high-definition STB market, the M3383 and M3603 address Pay TV market,” said Tony Chang, vice president of the Digital Entertainment Systems Business Unit at ALi Corporation. “These three solutions not only extend our product portfolio, but the offering also includes simple STB back-end solutions and lower power consumption that meets the European Union’s Eco-design standard. With the newly expanded STB SoC portfolio, ALi can help customers design entry-level to high-end STB products on a shortened time-to-market schedule. This is very critical for the competitive STB market in both emerging and established regions. The total solution that includes a decoder and demodulator on one platform also significantly reduces time to market and gives ALi great advantages over competitive solutions available in the market now.”

ALi’s M3383/M3603/M3606 SoCs feature dual 32-bit RISC CPUs, dual USB 2.0 HOST and Ethernet capability that make them ideal for developing hybrid STBs. Other major functional blocks include a DDRII SDRAM/flash memory controller, SPDIF, 5.1 channel digital audio interface to support Dolby® Digital, Dolby® Digital Plus, HE-AAC, etc., and dedicated display engine for STB playback. An embedded TV encoder, audio DAC, HDMI transmitter, accelerator for MPEG-1/2/4, H.264 and JPEG decoding and demodulators enable these SoCs to offer flexible total solutions for satellite, terrestrial, cable and IPTVs.

Product Availability

Samples of the M3383/M3603/M3606 are available upon request, and a reference platform is available now. All three are ready for volume shipping in Q3 2010.