Blusens Relies on Sigma Designs' Technology to Empower HDTV Home Entertainment Device

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
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New “blu:brain” Device Integrates Sigma’s Advanced SMP8634 Chipset as Main Processing Unit

MADRID, Spain & MILPITAS, Calif. — Sigma Designs (Nasdaq:SIGM), a leader in digital media processing system-on-chip (SoC) solutions for consumer electronics, today announced that their SMP8634 has been selected by Blusens, a leading provider of home digital entertainment products based in Spain, as the main processing unit in the Blusens “blu:brain” HDTV Home Entertainment Device. Blusens selected Sigma Designs’ chipset because its specialized multi-format High Definition AV decoding ensures the Blusens’ blu:brain is powered by a leading HDTV media processor technology that consumers can count on to deliver high quality video.

Blusens’ blu:brain is a complete HDTV Home Entertainment Device designed to manage, reproduce and distribute AV content between multiple sources, including an embedded hard drive based DVB-T receiver, a NAS, an Internet video stream, a remote PC, or through any of the multiple external AV connections on the device. Blu:brain is a media server plus Personal Video Recorder (PVR) in a single box, and allows users to enjoy its contents anywhere at anytime; allowing users to access their blu:brain’s AV content remotely from their PCs and mobile phones.

Inside the blu:brain, Sigma’s SMP8634 media processor offers a wide complement of advanced capabilities including powerful multimedia processing, robust content security system, multiple on-chip CPUs, and a range of on-chip system peripherals. The SMP8634 silicon also provides blu:brain with one of the most robust software suites available, featuring Sigma’s field-proven multimedia library, secure operating system and a Linux support environment.

“Blusens’ blu:brain is setting new standards in Home Entertainment Devices, and we use Sigma Designs’ chipsets because the company has developed the most advanced, competitive HDTV decoding SoC solutions on the market today,” said Miguel Churruca, Marketing Director at Blusens. “We also are very impressed with the variety of codecs the SMP8634 is compatible with, which allows easier integration and a better end-user experience.”

“Sigma’s SoC solutions are designed to work inside high definition consumer products across the globe,” said Ken Lowe, VP of strategic marketing at Sigma Designs. “Working with blu:brain illustrates the power of Sigma’s chipsets across markets as it gives both advanced HDTV processing capabilities and enables the delivery of IPTV services, a market that Sigma helped pioneer as far back as 2005.”

Blusens’ blu:brain includes a number of unique PVR features, such as place-shifting and the ability to combine the power of professional IPTV system with the dynamism of Web 2.0 via LambdaStream’s revolutionary software. Blusens has also partnered with software company LambdaStream in order to develop a new functional concept for consumer devices. The concept’s aim is to combine the power of professional IPTV systems with Web savvy consumer devices.

In addition to user generated video content, Blusens is concluding agreements with content providers to include Video On Demand (VoD), Over The Top (OTT) Video and IPTV content to be accessible with the blu:brain.