Sigma Designs shipping first UHD TV chip with Dolby Vision

Sigma Designs Shipping Mass Production of Industry’s First UHD TV Chip With Dolby Vision™

FREMONT, CA and LAS VEGAS, NV — CES Las Vegas — Sigma Designs® (NASDAQ: SIGM), a leading provider of intelligent system-on-chip (SoC) solutions focused on Internet of Things (IoT), Smart TV and media connectivity markets, has begun delivering volume quantities of its STV7701 Ultra HD High Dynamic Range (HDR). This powerful single-chip solution is the only product shipping in the market today that supports multiple HDR standards including Dolby Vision™, BD UHD HDR, and HDR 10 to enable the most amazing UHD visual experience available. The new UHD SoC comes with software optimized for over-the-top (OTT) video streaming services including Dolby Vision™ with a broad range of advanced capabilities for premium Smart TV offerings. STV7701 together with a companion Ultra HD FRC chip can provide an ideal solution for UHD 120Hz Smart TV.

Dolby Vision™ augments the fidelity of Ultra HD and HD video signals for over-the-top (OTT) online streaming, video on demand (VOD), broadcast, Ultra HD Blu-ray, and gaming applications. Today’s state-of-the-art cameras already capture more visual information than current TVs can display, but with Dolby Vision™, creative teams can finally have confidence that their content can be reproduced faithfully on Dolby Vision capable televisions.

“We are thrilled to collaborate with Sigma Designs to integrate Dolby Vision™ into its Ultra HD chipset solutions. Sigma Designs will bring the Dolby Vision™ experience to OTT streaming services and smart TVs, delivering a dramatically different visual experience with astonishing brightness and incomparable contrast,” said Giles Baker, Senior Vice President, Broadcast Business Group, Dolby Laboratories.

High Dynamic Range technology has emerged as a disruptive technology over the past year due to the significant enhancement it delivers to the television viewing experience. Over the past decade, televisions have seen large strides in resolution (number of pixels on the screen) as well as refresh rates (pixels per second), but HDR addresses the “third pillar of image quality” — the information content per pixel. This third pillar directly addresses the amazing gradients of brightness and color that the human eye is capable of perceiving but heretofore never delivered.

Key capabilities supported on this leading edge platform include:

• Ultra HD (UHD) Single Chip for 60Hz Smart TV
• 4K Ultra HD (UHD) resolution with High Dynamic Range and Wide Color Gamut capabilities include Dolby Vision™, HDR 10, SMPTE 2084 and 2086
• 512 Zones 2D Dimming
• HEVC (H.265) UHD 10 bit video decoding at 60fps
• Google VP9 UHD decoding
• Trusted Execution Environment and ARM Trust Zone support for content protection
• Integrated UHD HDMI v2 receivers with HDCPv2.2 content protection
• Integrated Civolution NexGuard forensic UHD watermarking Technology to curb content piracy
• Support for Android and Linux operating systems, as well as pre-integrated software for TV middleware, DRM, HTML5 browser engine and other software packages to build TV sets or other display products

Integration with industry partners — notably Google VP9 Technology and Civolution watermarking — also helps to make the STV7701 an ideal solution for next generation big-screen TV sets, providing the enhanced imaging and protection required for premium UHD services, including intensive high-motion content.

The new STV7701 single-chip solution is HDMI 2.0 capable and includes high-performance Quad Core ARM CPUs and Quad Core GPUs technology that enable outstanding video processing, advanced connectivity and OTT services for the next generation smart TV. To enable fast time to market, STV7701 comes with production-proven software solutions for all major geographical regions, as well as an integrated software stack for broadcast, broadband and in-home networking.

Sigma is demonstrating the first 4K Ultra HD Dolby Vision™ TV with Dolby ATMOS™, powered by the Sigma Designs SoC at CES 2016 in Las Vegas, January 6-9 in the Westgate Hotel, suite 2992.