Analysis: Cable industry not set for 'super' set top (repeat)
eet.com
By Junko Yoshida and George Leopold
with contribution from Craig Matsumoto
EE Times
(11/30/98, 12:07 p.m. EDT)
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. 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.
While the U.S. cable industry interoperability initiative 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. 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's Dulchinos 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-Franois
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. |
