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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: C. Niebucc who wrote (36410)	10/1/1998 7:47:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

It's a SGS thomson box, called Omega. In the right bottom picture you can see the Orega name plate. SGS Thomson's development kit is call Omega............................... one.st.com Development kit speeds set-top box time-to-market SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics has developed a hardware and software development kit for digital set-top boxes that accelerates time to market for manufacturers targeting digital satellite services worldwide. The kit builds on the company's success in set-top box applications, which has set a standard for the industry. With this 'reference design' to accelerate development of digital set top boxes, OEMs can cut six months from their design cycle. The first customers include leading DVB set-top box manufacturers in Europe, Japan, Asia and the USA. "This kit incorporates proven silicon technology with all the software necessary to create interactive boxes for next-generation digital TV services. It will accelerate the development of the satellite TV industry to the benefit of consumers worldwide as customers can reduce their development time," said Carlo Bozotti, Corporate Vice President for the Europe and Headquarters regions. "We have the most complete silicon solution available today in volume for set-top box manufacturers. Our leadership comes from our long experience in this sector and the close relationships we have with key customers. Knowing what they want, we will be delivering a two-chip solution next year," he added. The kit includes the ST20-TP2 or ST20-TP3 32-bit microcontroller, the STi3520A/L MPEG-2 decoder, the STi4600 Dolby AC-3™ decoder, the STV0119 PAL/NTSC encoder with Macrovision 7.0, the STV0190/STV0196 link/tuner interface and SGS-THOMSON EEPROM and flash memories. It also incorporates full source code drivers to reduce customer software development. To support interactive services, the development kit incorporates interfaces to IEEE-1284, IEEE-1394 and the V.34 modem standard. This will enable service providers to offer interactive services, connectivity to future home entertainment networks, and internet access. MPEG technology, SGS-THOMSON leadership Based on the STi3520 architecture used today in millions of set top boxes worldwide for DVB or DSS programs, the STi3520L offers advanced graphics features to support new interactive services and improved quality for set top box program guides and menus. New features supported include 8-bit graphics with improved filtering, letter box format for display of 16/9 pictures, simultaneous display of three planes including moving pictures, still picture and graphics, video up/down scaling, plus other features. According to latest available data from industry analyst Dataquest, SGS-THOMSON has a market share of 71.4% worldwide in MPEG-2 decoder ICs, which are used in set-top boxes, DVD players and multimedia PCs. ST20 - the preferred 32-bit micro for set-top applications Developed for cost-sensitive, embedded consumer applications, the ST20 family of micro cores has been adopted by many set-top box manufacturers. Capable of 40K Dhrystones, the ST20 is used as a system controller, transport and application host. Support for the ST20 micro is available with the PSOS and Vxworks real-time operating system kernels, and OpenTV, one of the world's leading interactive middleware systems. Later this year, SGS-THOMSON will also commence sampling of the ST20-TP3, which will offer significantly increased performance due to an enhanced micro core with on-chip instruction and data caches. It will also feature a programmable transport interface that enables the integration of conditional access systems, leading to considerable cost savings over solutions that use non-integrated designs. Future integration for lowest cost SGS-THOMSON is a pioneer in bringing digital entertainment to consumer markets. It has achieved numerous 'firsts' and though its mastery of MPEG technology the company will introduce higher-integration solutions to meet volume demand. Samples of its next-generation single-chip products, which integrate the STi3520A based MPEG2 audio/video decoder, the ST20 RISC/transport and STV0119 PAL/NTSC encoder, will be available next month. Called OMEGA, this new product family will offer an integrated solution for set top box or DVD back end , with dramatically improved processing and graphics performances. Top