Sigma Media Processors Power Celrun IPTV Set-Top Boxes Across Korea

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
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Companies Enter Collaborative Relationship to Develop Next Generation IPTV Set-Top Boxes for the Korean Market

MILPITAS, Calif. — Sigma Designs (Nasdaq:SIGM), a leader in digital media processing system-on-chip (SoC) solutions for consumer electronics, today announced that Sigma’s highly integrated SMP8654 media processors will be used to power Celrun’s TD-1100 set-top box (STB) which has been selected by telecom provider LG Dacom to be deployed throughout Korea. As part of this collaboration, Sigma’s chips have been integrated into Celrun’s TD-1100 set-top box and will support real-time IPTV streaming along with Video-on-Demand (VOD) services.

“Our selection by LG Dacom to be deployed across Korea was largely due to Sigma’s next-generation system-on-chip, SMP8654, as LG Dacom demanded set-top boxes that are robust and offer technology advanced enough to scale for all IPTV customers in Korea,” said Young Min Kim, CEO at Celrun. “As a longtime partner with Sigma Designs, the company continues to meet our needs in terms of best performance and cost – we look forward to our continued work together.”

“We are committed to helping Celrun provide their customers with best-in-class set-top boxes for the Korean market, where IPTV demand continues to increase significantly,” said Ken Lowe, vice president of strategic marketing at Sigma Designs. “With the increasing demand for IPTV services around the world, set-top box manufacturers continue to turn to Sigma’s industry leading price and performance offerings.”

Celrun’s TD-1100 set-top box, powered by Sigma’s SMP8654 media processors, supports multicasting, video-on-demand (VOD) functionality and digital rights management (DRM) requirements. The solution handles multi-task performance by processing multiple streams of content in tandem at speeds up to 20 Mbps and advanced encryption technology for enhanced copyright protection.

Sigma’s SMP8654: The Next Generation IPTV SoC Solution

Sigma’s SMP8654 media processor integrates a complete complement of next-generation capabilities for a single-chip system-on-chip (SoC) solution with powerful multimedia processing, robust content security system, multiple on-chip CPUs and a full complement of system peripherals. Its combination of on-chip processors and memory controllers yields an impressive 50% increase in overall performance to provide the headroom needed for next generation IPTV service features. At the same time, taking advantage of the latest memory components and integrated peripherals, the SMP8654 can reduce sub-system cost by around 30 percent compared to its predecessor, the industry leading SMP8634.

From a media processing standpoint, the SMP8654 offers a full complement of advanced decoder engines with high definition video decoding, including H.264 (MPEG-4 part 10), Windows Media® Video 9, VC-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 (part 2) and the new AVS standard. High-performance graphics acceleration, multi-standard audio decoding, advanced display processing capabilities and HDMI 1.3 output round out its multimedia core. Powerful content security is ensured through a dedicated secure processor, on-chip flash memory and a range of digital rights management (DRM) engines for high-speed payload decryption. The SMP8654 also features a full complement of system peripherals, including a dual Gigabit Ethernet controller, dual USB 2.0 controller, NAND flash controller, IR controller and SATA controller.