Entropic Communications' Single Wire Direct-Broadcast Satellite Technology Deployed to Brazilian Single-Family Homes

Monday, March 12th, 2012
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Entropic’s Channel Stacking Switch Provides Enhanced Direct-to-Home Entertainment Services to More Brazilian Households

SAN DIEGO — Entropic Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:ENTR), a leading provider of silicon and software solutions to enable connected home entertainment, and Prime Electronics & Satellitics Inc. (Taipei:6152), a leading manufacturer of advanced digital satellite communication and wireless consumer electronic products, today announced that one of the largest telecommunications carriers in Brazil will deliver Direct-Broadcast Satellite (DBS) entertainment services to single family homes (SFH) via Entropic’s Channel Stacking Switch (CSS) single cable wire infrastructure.

According to a recent report from Digital TV Research, by 2016, the Brazilian Direct-to-Home (DTH) pay-TV market is expected to reach 11.8 million households, yielding an 18.8 percent penetration rate; doubling today’s total. By adopting Entropic’s CSS technology, DBS service providers can capitalize on these growth expectations – offering better service to its SFH customers. Additionally with CSS technology, DBS service providers can support multiple tuners over a single cable – enabling multi-tuner set-top boxes (STB), such as digital video recording (DVR) devices, to deliver high definition (HD) services to multiple rooms in the home, allowing easy plug-and-play STB installations, simplifying upgrades and new installations at a lower cost¾all with improved aesthetics for the homeowner.

“This technology collaboration with Entropic provides our Brazilian pay-TV service provider a solution to offer its single-family customer base a cost-effective transition to advanced TV and entertainment services,” said Vincent Hung, vice president, Sales and Marketing, Prime Electronics & Satellitics. “We have worked closely with the Entropic development team to design and implement a robust single cable DBS system which is currently being successfully deployed to Brazilian multiple dwelling units (MDU) customers. We are confident this approach will meet all end-user entertainment experience requirements for SFH customers, quickly and without the need to add any new costs or wiring.”

Entropic has changed the paradigm of DBS installations with its CSS technology. Designed to significantly reduce both the cost and complexity of SFH satellite deployments, Entropic’s CSS technology leverages its RF5219 chip into a low noise block (LNB) product, which alleviates the need for multiple new cables to be brought into the home when more than a single tuner STB is installed. In this new build-out model, DBS service providers can provide access to available programming for up to four tuners within a single cable run from the satellite dish – keeping installation costs at a minimum and in many cases, enabling DBS service where it would otherwise be impossible to deliver.

“We’re excited about this latest deployment of our CSS technology as Prime Electronics & Satellitics and its service provider customers continue to differentiate their technology offerings and expand their reach from multi-dwelling units into single family homes,” said Patrick Henry, president and chief executive officer, Entropic. “As Brazilian viewing habits migrate from a single location to multiple screens per home and as consumers begin to adopt time shifting services such as DVRs, our technology will be a key enabler for this transition by providing flexibility and increased user video bandwidth.”

Additionally, by deploying Entropic’s proven CSS solution, customers have the unique opportunity to receive additional new home networking services based on Entropic’s leading MoCA® (Multimedia over Coax) silicon and software solutions, which provide the ability to reliably distribute multiple streams of HD content – from video, audio and data traffic – throughout the home.