Conexant Shows Design

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. -- Conexant Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CNXT - News), a worldwide leader in semiconductor solutions for broadband communications and the digital home, today announced the availability of two complete, OpenCable(TM)-compliant cable set-top box (STB) reference designs for high-definition (HD) personal video recording (PVR) applications. The comprehensive reference designs are based on the company's recently announced CX2445X DOCSIS 2.0+ and EuroDOCSIS 2.0+ cable modem integrated circuits, and can be configured with either Conexant's CX24500 single-channel or CX2427X dual-channel HD MPEG-2/H.264/VC-1 video decoder. The highly integrated solutions also include core software and drivers that enable developers to quickly develop middleware and innovative applications for next-generation cable STBs.

"In today's fast-moving marketplace, time-to-market often determines a product's success, particularly in rapidly growing applications such as personal video recording," said Lewis Brewster, executive vice president and general manager of Conexant's Broadband Media Processing business. "Our new reference designs provide manufacturers with the ability to shorten product development cycles, which can provide them with a competitive edge that may translate to greater market share down the road."

The reference designs include support for OpenCable applications platform (OCAP(TM)), a middleware software layer specification that enables manufacturers to develop products that will run on any cable television system in North America, independent of the STB receiver hardware or operating system software. In addition, an embedded processor enables advanced hardware security features, and supports major industry security standards including downloadable conditional access system (DCAS(TM)) and multi-stream CableCARD(TM) (M-Card(TM)). The reference designs also support major operating systems such as Linux®.

Conexant's CX2445X family of DOCSIS 2.0+ front-end cable STB chips feature three demodulators with downstream channel bonding capability, which significantly increases bandwidth capacity. Also included is an integrated out-of-band cable physical layer (PHY), which provides compatibility with legacy U.S. cable systems, and supports Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) standards 55-1 and 55-2.

The reference designs are offered with either Conexant's CX24500 single-channel video decoder for mass market STB devices with PVR capabilities, or the CX2427X dual-channel device which is capable of decoding two HDTV programs simultaneously for picture-in-picture display, and supporting networked PVR for whole-house video solutions. Both of the decoders support key video compression standards including MPEG-2, MPEG-4 advanced video coding (AVC)/H.264, and VC-1.

Conexant Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CNXT)