Transcoding technology from STMicroelectronics connects digital homes to everything, everywhere, all the time

Industry-unique Faroudja® Transcoding Technology from STMicroelectronics Connects Digital Homes to Everything, Everywhere, All the Time

GENEVA — STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications, has introduced the industry’s first transcoding engine that enables a home gateway to distribute any type of content to any type of connected device in the home. Initially implemented in the popular STiH416 (‘Orly’) and fully supported in the recently introduced STiH407/STiH410/STiH412 (‘Monaco’) System-on-Chip (SoC) devices, the new transcoding engine is set to become an integral part of all of ST’s Home Gateway solutions.

Transcoding is the process of converting one digitally encoded stream into a different format and is an essential part of the “Everything, Everywhere” paradigm. This approach allows all broadcast and Internet services to be accessed by any wired or wirelessly connected device in the home, including legacy devices that lack the processing power or memory capacity to handle the data directly. Up till now, Set-Top Box/Home Gateway systems either compromised on the number of supported transcode channels or required an additional dedicated transcoder device to meet the required number of channels. In either case, the resulting video quality had limitations related to de-interlacing and other video-processing techniques that produced visible artifacts on tablets and mobile devices supporting progressive displays. In addition, content has been limited to TV broadcast, preventing the streaming of user-generated content in other important formats such as JPEG, MJPEG, DivX, VP8, VC-1, and WMV.

ST has overcome these limitations with its industry-unique Faroudja® transcoding technology. By leveraging the best-of-breed Faroudja de-interlacing and post-processing techniques, Home Gateway devices enable IP-connected clients to display content with unprecedented quality. The technology is supported in ST chipsets by the new ST-developed software based on the open GStreamer standard. This revolutionary solution allows many incoming data formats to be converted in real time to H.264, allowing users to enjoy TV, browsing, gaming and other external services on any client device anywhere in the home, including tablets, mobile devices, laptops and connected TVs.

Image transcoding enables fast slide shows and optimized storage utilization for pictures on mobile devices. High-speed transcoding also enables side-loading of content at speeds never before achieved, empowering users to download content to a mobile device and access it on tablets and other mobile devices on the go.

“ST’s image-transcoding technology makes homes ultimately connected, allowing users to access any content in any format on any device from tablets to TVs,” said Andrew Cofler, System Architecture Director, Unified Platform Division, STMicroelectronics. “With its advanced transcode engine that delivers best-in-class security, low power consumption and industry-leading performance, ST is taking the emerging home-server and home-gateway application segment to the next level.”

The new technology is already implemented in the popular STiH416 (‘Orly’) device and fully supported in the recently introduced STiH407/STiH410/STiH412 (‘Monaco’) devices, with up to four channels of transcoding enabled through GStreamer interfaces on the ARM® Cortex™ MPCore™ application processor. The transcoding technology increases the number of channels as well as adds support for additional video formats such as HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding).