PARIS — Responding to service providers’ growing interest in offering “triple play” voice, data and video services, Texas Instruments on Monday (Oct. 3) unveiled at the Broadband World Forum a new residential gateway reference design that serves as a DSL modem, router and IPTV set-top box.
The new reference design, dubbed AR7STB, marries TI’s DSL router with its media processor built around its C64x DSP core.
Unlike other emerging IPTV set-top box designs, often focused solely on video decoding capabilities, TI said its AR7STB will enable service operators to provide both broadcast video and data services through a DSL connection.
“Service providers can go with either a one box or a two box [DSL modem and standard set-top] approach,” said Kurt Eckles, director of marketing at TI’s residential gateway embedded systems group.
The current cost of a box based on the AR7STB — including DSL modem, router and IPTV functionalities — will be under $100, according to Eckles.
Through the product release, TI also hopes to provide customers a glimpse of its new DaVinci platform. With DaVinci, the AR7STB can be morphed into not only a faster, cheaper DSL solution, but would also give set-top vendors alternatives for covering much of the "triple play" market, explained Eckles.
Incorporated in the AR7STB development board are: a video subsection based on TI’s 600-MHz DSP running multiple audio video codecs; an ADSL subsection based on a single chip integrated with Ethernet, USB, power management while supporting ADSL2/ADSL2Plus and others; and two sets of standard memory designed to support each subsection.
The TMS320DM642 used in the video subsection offers software support, including H.264, MPEG-2 and -4, Microsoft’s Windows Media Video 9, AC-3, AAC and others. The set top based on the DM642 enables both high- and standard-definition decoding for most codecs.
Using the AR7STB as an IPTV set top eliminates the need to add another CPU to the development board since an operating system and middleware run on the MIPS core — MIPS4KEc — embedded inside the AR7 DSL
London-based Video Networks has already TI’s triple play technology based on the AR7STB. The U.K. service provider offers digital TV, broadband connections and voice over existing phone lines. Video Networks offers up to 80 broadcast channels and over 1,000 movies on demand. It's HomeChoice service is “the world’s first” revenue-generating broadcast television service that has completely migrated from MPEG-2 to the exclusive use of H.264 for its IPTV, according to TI.
