SOFTBANK And Samsung Select Sigma Designs' MPEG Decoder Chips For World's Largest Broadband TV Over DSL Deployment
Monday September 23, 10:33 am ET
MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 23, 2002--Sigma Designs (Nasdaq:SIGM - News), a leader in IP video streaming solutions, today announced that it has been selected by Samsung and SOFTBANK Broadmedia Corporation, the broadband content and application unit of SOFTBANK, as the supplier of MPEG decoder chips for a new broadband TV service deployment in Japan.
SOFTBANK Broadmedia Corporation's subsidiary Club iT, a content aggregation and marketing company, will launch and market an interactive TV service, known as `BB Cable TV' through its wholly-owned subsidiary, BB Cable Corporation. BB Cable Corporation recently completed its registration as a cable television broadcaster for broadband TV services over DSL. This registration was the first of its kind in Japan.
Using the latest in broadband technology, the SOFTBANK service enables the delivery of multi-channel television (including true video on demand and a personal program guide) via standard television sets. The service will be available to all SOFTBANK Yahoo! BB ADSL customers within the areas detailed below with sufficient link speed between the customer premise equipment (CPE) and the DSLAM. The consumer rollout will commence in the autumn of 2002.
The Yahoo! BB service is the fastest growing broadband network in Japan and the BB Cable TV deployment is expected to be the largest of its kind in the world, with a target to deploy the solution to the 885,000 Yahoo! BB subscribers nationwide (as of August 2002). The rollout will start in Tokyo and will extend to Saitama-city, Chiba-city and Yokohama from December 2002. The service will be further extended to Sapporo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe and Fukuoka from March 2003.
Taro Hashimoto, CEO of SOFTBANK Broadmedia Corporation, Club iT Corporation and BB Cable Corporation, said, "I believe that this initiative will redefine the relationship customers have with all types of media. This is the natural extension of the broadband Internet experience in a converging telecommunications world. I am sure that BB Cable TV will become the benchmark for other broadband TV services both in Japan and abroad. We evaluated many solutions on the market and strongly believe in the key technology partners we selected for a long-term solution."
Samsung has been selected to supply the low-cost set-top boxes tailored to SOFTBANK's requirements. The set-top boxes are based on Sigma's EM8400 MPEG decoder chip and streaming video driver software. Additionally, ThirdSpace Ltd is supplying the middleware and client software, with conditional access technology provided by NDS.
"Ensuring high-quality video output was one of our primary goals for the SOFTBANK set-top box," stated Dr. Hee-Won Park, senior manager of Set-top Box Development for Samsung. "Sigma's EM8400 silicon solution delivers this level of quality along with proven driver support for streaming video on demand."
Sigma's EM8400 MPEG decoder chip, based on the company's award-winning REALmagic® Video Streaming Technology, is a highly-integrated solution for the decoding of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 streams. Accompanied by a portfolio of system level software for streaming video, video-on-demand, and DVD playback, the EM8400 has become the most popular MPEG decoder chip for IP video set-top boxes, with over 50 design wins in telco and commercial applications.
"Deploying a Broadband TV service based on a DSL network of this magnitude is a milestone for our industry," said Ken Lowe, Sigma Designs' vice president of business development. "We are very excited to be working with a top-quality manufacturer, such as Samsung, to deliver set-top boxes for SOFTBANK's groundbreaking project." |
