Broadcom has announced a 1GHz full-band capture digital tuning technology integrated in three new 40nm hybrid IP cable set-top boxes and DOCSIS 3.0 gateway SoC solutions.
These new devices deliver the cable tuner density and performance that operators need to convert current cable systems to IP-based video platforms.
Broadcom’s Full-Band Capture (FBC) provides scalable bandwidth while reducing power, cost and simplifying cable tuner design. The company said it also accelerates the deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 cable gateways and hybrid IP cable STBs. Hybrid IP cable STBs will more efficiently bring additional video streams and IP services to connected devices in the home ecosystem and are expected to grow at 40 percent through 2014.
Broadcom’s FBC technology directly digitizes the entire 1GHz downstream spectrum, replacing the need for a large number of tuners with a single FBC digital tuner.
Full-band capture technology advantages include digital tuning engineered with enhanced signal processing techniques that exceed the most challenging performance requirements demanded by operators. Any demodulator can tune to any frequency removing wideband “block” tuner restrictions. The device gains more than 50 percent power reduction with new tuner architecture.
FastRTV channel change technology paired with full-band capture provides quick channel change regardless of frequency. The device dramatically minimizes the number of components by replacing up to nine cable tuners in a system with only one FBC digital tuner supporting as many demodulators as required.
Broadcom’s 40nm 8-QAM BCM3128 and 4-QAM BCM3124 cable multireceiver SoCs and the 400Mb/s BCM3383 Euro/DOCSIS 3.0 cable gateway SoC support FBC technology and are now shipping.
