DVB-C tuner helps shrink cable set top boxes

Advanced single-chip digital video broadcasting silicon tuner IC supports international DVB-C standard popular in Europe, Asia, Australia and South Africa.

New from RF Magic, the RF4800 is an advanced single-chip digital video broadcasting over cable (DVB-C) silicon tuner integrated circuit (IC) developed specifically for applications compliant with the international DVB-C standard popular in Europe, Asia, Australia and South Africa.

In co-operation with STMicroelectronics, the world's leading supplier of silicon chips for set-top boxes (STBs), RF Magic has certified full firmware interoperability of its new DVB-C silicon tuner IC with ST's newest video demodulator and integrated MPEG decoder/demodulator.

Ideal for motherboard designs in STB applications, RF Magic's RF4800 and STMicroelectronics' newest DVB-C demodulator IC, the STV297E and its decoder, the STi5107, enable more compact receiver design with a footprint one-quarter the size of current adopted technology.

Traditionally, CAN tuners have been the preferred tuner solution for DVB-C STB applications.

However, driven by the increasing need for small form factor and high performance, silicon tuners are being rapidly adopted by the industry.

"Our ability to deliver this bundled DVB-C tuner and receiver is quite significant, not only for our company but for the industry as well", stated Mark Foley, CEO and President of RF Magic.

"We have already proven successful in sales of other silicon tuners through co-operation with STMicroelectronics".

"The addition of the RF4800 DVB-C will add to our prior success in delivering complete turnkey solutions to the market".

"The reference design deploys our enhanced STV279E high performance QAM demodulator to deliver dramatic performance improvements and big cost advantages for manufacturers", said Monica De Virgiliis, General Manager for ST's Home Video Division.

"By combining our leading-edge QAM demodulator with RF Magic's tuner, we will enable the deployment of all digital solutions for the DVB-C market where the analogue-to-digital switchover is rapidly gathering momentum".

Featuring RF Magic's AdaptiveTune technology, the RF4800 contains all front-end functions and requires no external SAW filters or amplifiers.

In addition, the AdaptiveTune feature allows key characteristics of the tuner to be programmed via software to optimise front-end performance for different environmental conditions.

The STV297E is a low-power, ultracompact DVB-C single-chip receiver that performs IF or baseband differential signals to MPEG-2 block processing of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) carriers.

The STV297E is fully compliant with the DVB-C specification (EN300 429) and NorDig Unified specification.

NorDig Compliance testing has been completed and the companies are offering full production-ready reference designs.

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