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Any comments on the feature set. Will this chip sell well?
How many set tops does SONY make?
Ready or not, race for set-tops begins
Junko Yoshida and George Leopold
Anaheim, Calif. - With standards still in flux, set-top and semiconductor
makers in the United States and Europe are being left largely to their own
devices in the drive to define a feature-rich, reliable "super set-top" box for
next-generation TV. Lacking final specifications from a U.S. cable-industry
interoperability initiative called OpenCable, STMicroelectronics, C-Cube
Microsystems, Philips and others will be banging the drum for proprietary
solutions at the Western Show here this week.
Rather than waiting for OpenCable, chip vendors are looking elsewhere for
definitions, said Philippe Lambinet, digital-video division general manager of
STMicroelectronics (Grenoble, France). The chip community is looking to the
advanced digital set-top requirements imposed by individual cable operators
such as industry leader Tele-Communications Inc. (Denver), or to powerful
software suppliers such as Microsoft Corp., he said.
It's no secret that many chip makers are also jockeying for an opportunity to
be a player in Europe, where interactive TV is on the fast track. Thus, chip
and system vendors face a tough balancing act: They must design their
platforms flexibly enough to accommodate evolving specifications for the U.S.
cable industry while also ensuring that the same platform complies with
individual set-top requirements from potential European customers. On top of
all that, they must keep an eye on the price tag.
Designing substantial processing power into the set-top platform is a must for
this emerging market, observers said. So is upping bus power, unleashing
graphics muscular enough for HTML-based applications and building in a
return-channel capability. Anything less is unacceptable, according to
developers on both sides of the Atlantic.
While OpenCable has yet to nail down the final written technical specs that
spell out such requirements, European companies are forging ahead, promising
advances in software and hardware platform designs through Europe's DVB
Project and its Multimedia Home Platform (see Nov. 23, page 1). Through
DVB, "Europeans are definitely taking further steps by setting much more
detailed specifications, including the API-level standardization," said Lambinet.
OpenCable officials said they prefer to set "performance benchmarks" rather
than firm requirements. "We're not going to try to hit a moving target," said
Don Dulchinos, director of business development for CableLabs (Louisville,
Colo.), which is heading up the OpenCable effort.
OpenCable's prime objective is fostering interoperability among set-tops
running on different cable networks. This will be done by setting requirements
for the set-top-box front end and by the way conditional-access needs are
handled. But what goes inside the back end of the box remains unclear,
including whether there will be a standard set of APIs or specific requirements
for decoding U.S. digital HDTV signals inside the box.
"Many chip vendors talk about their chip sets being OpenCable-compliant,
but I wonder how that's possible when OpenCable has issued no written
technical specifications at this point," said Chris Adams, vice president of
marketing and systems solutions at C-Cube Microsystems (Milpitas, Calif.).
By contrast, Canal Plus (Paris), Europe's largest digital-video service
provider, has already given its chip-set and system partners, under a
non-disclosure agreement, detailed technical specifications based on the
company's MediaHighway+ platform, which is expected to migrate into the
DVB's Multimedia Home Platform.
About 3 million digital set- tops are in use in Europe today that incorporate
Canal Plus conditional access and MediaHighway middleware. The company
said its proprietary software will be upgraded to DVB specs by next year.
Meanwhile, OpenCable'sDul- chinos said the U.S. group expects to complete
all but the software portion of its set-top interoperability specs by the end of
the year. Among the software issues yet to be resolved is how to implement
plans for running multiple operating systems. A software spec should be ready
during the first half of 1999.
Dulchinos also said security and copy-protection issues have slowed
development. "There's sort of a rolling procedure" for reviewing draft
specifications, he said. The goal is to devise a "core specification" for set- top
development. "This is only a one-year-old process," he added. "I think we're
on track."
Also unclear is the question of Internet access. "OpenCable is slowly migrating
to the requirements of having Web capability on some of these boxes," said
Jack Guedj, senior business-development director for chip maker IGS
Technologies Inc. (Boulder, Colo.). "They're nowhere close to an Internet or
Web TV box."
In pursuit of solutions for advanced graphics, CPU and two-way
communication capabilities in set-top boxes, Broadcom, TeraLogic, Equator
Technologies and ATI Technologies, relative newcomers to the back end of
the digital set-top box, are rushing products to market. Meanwhile, traditional
decoder IC vendors such as STM, C-Cube and Philips Semiconductors are
also unveiling freshly minted digital set-top platforms.
STMicroelectronics will unveil a new platform here called the Orion board
that for the first time will use the ST40-the SH4 core licensed from Hitachi-as
a main processor. The board will also include its STi7000 digital HDTV
all-format decoder chip, as well as the company's ST20-based transport
demux chip. A 3-D graphics chip, the RIVA-128, designed by partner
Nvidia, is optional.
The board represents STM's first serious attempt at trying to pry open the
U.S. digital cable market, company executives said. The European chip maker
hopes to finesse its way into advanced digital cable set-tops such as General
Instruments' DCT-5000 with a solution that provides a potent brew: a U.S.
digital-TV all-format decoder combined with a unique memory architecture
and ample processing power. The ST40 runs at 200 MHz and the ST20 at 60
MHz, upgraded to 100 MHz next year.
More important, said Bob Krysiak, division general manager of STM's micro
and DSP division, "While any one of those chips is available today, a
[common] design methodology is already in place so that any blocks are
ready to be integrated by next fall, using a 0.25-micron process."
In a related development, C-Cube will announce today a new digital set-top
silicon platform of its own, designated AViA@TV. The platform, which the
company hopes to pitch to U.S. cable operators, has already been embraced
by Canal Plus, Sony and Pioneer, according to company officials.
Built around a 32-bit Sparc RISC chip with a five-stage pipeline, the platform
offers high-speed rendering based on an integrated CPU and on-chip
hardware-acceleration capabilities such as blitter engine and color expander.
A vertical and horizontal image filter eliminates flicker, and the chip boasts
24-bit color and 8-bit alpha blending capabilities. It is also capable of
providing six graphics planes.
What makes the platform unique, said Adams, is an architecture in which a
separate MPEG-2/Dolby AV decoder chip can communicate with the
embedded CPU directly through a 22-bit address bus. That provides the
decoder chip with high bandwidth and a full address data path to the CPU. "In
previous solutions, there was never enough bandwidth available both for an
AV decoder and a graphics accelerator," Adams said.
C-Cube's solution is also designed for two-way cable networks. Its integrated
host CPU supports a media-access control layer for two-way networks,
prepping the platform for two-way cable modems if connected with a
separate physical-layer chip.
Similarly, Philips Semiconductors recently unveiled in Europe its own set-top
silicon. The Digital Video Platform includes a 32-bit MIPS proces-sor-based
transport MPEG source decoder and a separate audio-, video- and
graphics-decoder chip. The platform allows OEMs to opt for a TriMedia
media processor, making it possible for both service operators and system
companies to upgrade their products.
Guenther Dengel, managing director of consumer systems at Philips
Semiconductors, said that "four to five OEMs have already taken our concept
and invested their own resources into further executions" in their digital
set-tops and TV products.
Digital TV in Europe has evolved into a more popular form of multichannel
broadcasting, often coupled with limited but established interactive services.
Meanwhile, digital interactive TV services in the United Sates have been
largely oversold and seldom deployed. The result has been lost credibility
within the U.S. electronics industry about the prospects for interactive
services.
Whereas the U.S. cable industry has largely failed to deliver on its interactive
DTV promises, in Europe more than a few service providers have made
commercial progress.
Canal Plus, for example, already offers an electronic programming guide,
tele-banking and tele-shopping using a smart card on its set-top box, along
with interactive weather forecasts and simple video games.
By implementing middleware technology, including its own virtual machine,
Canal Plus has developed DTV applications "completely independent of any
chip set or microprocessor used in any set-top," claimed Jean-Francois
Jezequel, marketing and sales general manager of DTV technologies at the
company.
Canal Plus has already ported its MediaHighway middleware to STM's ST20
and to the PowerPC. The company has now added C-Cube's Sparc V8 to its
portfolio.
Jezequel said 200 Mips of CPU power-half of it devoted to graphics
acceleration-is a requirement of the company's next-generation Media Web
Box. It is to be launched next year. A 28.8k modem is the minimum
requirement for a return channel for satellite; also needed are 4 to 8 Mbytes of
RAM and 4 Mbytes of flash memory, he said. - Craig Matsumoto contributed
to this report. |
