Broadcom combines its SOC with RaisingSun's middleware for Chinese DTV market

Shanghai based digital video technology company Raising Sun in technical collaboration with Broadcom, has designed Digital TV turnkey solutions by combining Broadcom BCM3549 DTV system-on-a-chip (SoC) semiconductor device with its middleware. The combined HDTV supported ready-to-use reference design kind of solution allows TV manufacturers to develop digital televisions for the Chinese market supporting China's broadcast standards which includes PAL analog TV, DVB-C digital cable TV, DTMB digital terrestrial TV, and the new HD format AVS.

Imagine a massive 1.2 billion (approximate) people moving over to digital television by 2015. It's opportunity boom for semiconductor vendors. China's has developed its own terrestrial modulation and cable card specifications in support of the country's initiative to convert analog TV services to digital by 2015. According to market researcher In-Stat, China is expected to have over 135 million TV subscribers by 2013. Additionally, support will be needed for pay-TV operators in China as they transition to two-way interactive networks paving the way for the deployment of advanced services such as video-on-demand (VoD).

The features of this combined solution covers dynamic user interfaces, Internet connectivity, including support for popular widget applications. The DTV solution also integrates the Adobe Flash Platform to view Flash-based content and applications from Internet sources like youtube and such video sites.

"With Internet connectivity and DVB-C support, the Broadcom and RaisingSun 'all-in-one' DTV design platform will enable TV manufacturers to quickly realize the benefits of the two-way network upgrade in China, which is required to enable the deployment of advanced interactive services such as VoD," said Peter Zhu, General Manager of RaisingSun. "With two-way network upgrade completed in more than 170 cities and now serving 10 million cable TV users, we look forward to continuing our collaboration with Broadcom to meet the requirements of the Chinese digital TV market."

China looks to be offering some interesting new opportunities for semiconductor vendors to pull the market from dirty recession path to growth path.