SAN JOSE, Calif. – Broadcom upgraded two families of chips for set-top boxes and residential gateways and forged two software partnerships, including one to support Echostar's Sling Media technology.
Broadcom upgraded six members of its BCM7400 and 3300 families to support for the MoCA 2.0 home networking over coax standard. The new standard, ratified in June 2010, sports twice the bandwidth of the existing MoCA 1.1 spec.
The chips, sampling now, integrate baseband, MAC and RF functions. Other chip companies supporting MoCA include Entropic, Marvell, NXP, STMicro and Trident.
Separately, Broadcom has added at least five new members to its lower cost BCM7200 family geared for set-tops that bring so-called over-the-top Web video services to TVs. The chips support DLNA, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Display, NFC, MoCA 1.1, HomePlug and Ethernet. Some members support stereo 3-D, OpenGL ES 2.0 and dual HD decoding.
Some set tops will use near field communications as a means of pairing TVs with handsets or other devices so they can share media over Wi-Fi Direct, said Steve Palm, a senior technical director at Broadcom. Netgear, which currently uses the 7200 chips in some systems, expressed support for the new devices.
In terms of software, members of Broadcom's 7400 series now support Sling Media from Echostar for sharing media between remote devices. The deal lets Broadcom make chips for Echostar's satellite TV set-tops as well as for third party set-top makers that Echostar is expected to license.
In addition, Broadcom now sells some chips that support the Alien Vue software of Myriad Group AG which brings support for Android applications to smart TVs.
The company also had expected to announce support for Comcast's OCAP reference design kit, a middleware offering for running cable TV apps. However, a company spokesman said the deal was postponed at the last minute.
Broadcom upgrades set-top, gateway chips
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