Broadcom Pioneers Breakthrough in Digital Cable Tuner Design

Monday, June 13th, 2011
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Introduces Industry’s First Fully Digital Full-Band Capture Technology – Fosters Transition to Hybrid IP-based Cable Platforms

  • To meet consumer demand for TV everywhere and high speed Internet, Broadcom’s Full-Band Capture (FBC) enables a more efficient distribution of video streams and IP services to connected devices in the home ecosystem
  • FBC enables unprecedented bandwidth scalability and flexibility on hybrid IP cable set-top boxes and DOCSIS 3.0 cable gateways
  • FBC replaces wideband and multiple analog video tuners with one system-on-a-chip (SoC) for simpler, smaller, faster, and lower power designs

CHICAGO — The Cable Show — Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a global innovation leader in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, today announced the industry’s first 1GHz Full-Band Capture digital tuning technology integrated in three new 40nm hybrid IP cable set-top box (STB) and DOCSIS 3.0 gateway SoC solutions. These deliver the cable tuner density and performance that operators need to convert current cable systems to IP-based video platforms.

Broadcom’s FBC provides scalable bandwidth while reducing power, cost and simplifying cable tuner design while accelerating the deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 cable gateways and hybrid IP cable STBs. Hybrid IP cable STBs will more efficiently bring additional video streams and IP services to connected devices in the home ecosystem and are expected to grow at 40 percent through 2014*.

Key Technology Advantages:

  • Broadcom’s FBC technology directly digitizes the entire 1GHz downstream spectrum, replacing the need for a large number of tuners with only one FBC digital tuner. Full-Band Capture technology advantages include:
    • Digital tuning: engineered with new enhanced signal processing techniques that exceed the most challenging performance requirements demanded by operators.
    • Bandwidth deployment flexibility: any demodulator can tune to any frequency removing wideband “block” tuner restrictions.
    • Reduced power consumption: more than 50 percent reduction with new tuner architecture.
    • Faster channel change: FastRTV™ channel change technology paired with Full-Band Capture provides quick channel change regardless of frequency.
    • Reduced system cost: dramatically minimizes the number of components by replacing up to nine cable tuners in a system with only one FBC digital tuner supporting as many demodulators as required.
  • Broadcom’s 40nm 8-QAM BCM3128 and 4-QAM BCM3124 cable multi-receiver SoCs and the 400 Mbps BCM3383 Euro/DOCSIS 3.0 cable gateway SoC are the industry’s first fully integrated solutions to support FBC technology and are now shipping to customers.

* In-Stat Market Research, 8/2010