Broadcom's New Turnkey Blu-ray Disc® And HD DVD Reference Design Allows Manufacturers To Bring Products To Market Quickly

Industry's Most Advanced High Definition Optical Disc Player Design Platform Enables Low Price Points for Widespread Consumer Adoption [The following is a release from Broadcom Corporation]

January 9, 2008

Broadcom Corporation, a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, today announced a new reference design platform for qualified OEMs and ODMs that provides a turnkey solution for developing the world's newest generation of high definition (HD) optical disc players. Announced today is the Broadcom® BCM97440 reference design, which is built around the Broadcom BCM7440 system-on-a-chip (SoC) solution currently shipping in the world's only universal players – the BD-UP5000 from Samsung Electronics and the BH200 from LG Electronics. The BCM7440 continues to be the industry's only single-chip solution that fully supports the demanding requirements of both Blu-ray Disc® and HD DVD standards. With the BCM7440 SoC as the foundation, the new BCM97440 reference design incorporates complete software stacks that meet Blu-ray™, HD DVD and universal player requirements enabling manufacturers to introduce mass market HD solutions to market quickly, and at the right price points for widespread consumer adoption. With two high definition optical disc media player options currently available, consumers are often confused when it comes to choosing one format over the other. The BCM97440 reference design alleviates this industry dilemma by providing media player manufacturers with the design tools capable of meeting the demanding processing requirements of both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD standards. Featuring multiple processing cores and software stacks, the BCM97440 reference design provides the necessary performance to support next generation interactive technologies and network connected applications currently being developed by Hollywood studios using sophisticated BD-Java (Blu-ray Disc) and HDi (HD DVD) technologies. "Our highly integrated universal BCM7440 SoC leverages our field proven expertise in software to provide a turnkey solution for manufacturers looking to develop Blu-ray, HD DVD and universal players," said Dan Eiref, Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Consumer Electronics line of business. "With this new turnkey platform, Broadcom is driving the availability of HD optical disc players by enabling manufacturers to easily develop mass market products at low system costs." BCM97440 Platform Information The BCM7440 Blu-ray/HD DVD SoC offers OEMs a high performance, single-chip media player design platform that incorporates the decoding, processing and memory functions for both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD media players, eliminating the need for manufacturers to build two different hardware platforms. It integrates a multiple core MIPS® architecture, a multi-stream HD video decoder, dedicated graphics engines, digital signal processing (DSP)-based audio processors, a security processor, double data rate (DDR) interfaces, integrated video and audio outputs and a complete array of system and network connectivity interfaces. To complete its capabilities, the BCM97440 reference platform offers a full range of analog and digital outputs including full 1080p HDMI 1.3 digital output, HD component and standard definition baseband video analog outputs, SPDIF and stereo analog outputs, an optional multi-channel analog output module, optical drive interfaces, a 10/100 Base-T Ethernet port, and a USB 2.0 expansion port. The BCM97440 reference design supports a complete software stack that meets Blu-ray, HD DVD and universal player requirements, and has been designed to allow OEMs or ODMs to easily customize the overall look and feel of the splash screens and system menus. The software stack includes support for easily adding additional languages and remote control codes. Availability and Pricing The BCM97440C reference design with a Blu-ray Disc and legacy DVD application software stack is available now to qualified customers. The HD DVD and universal dual format application software will be available in the first half of 2008. Pricing is available upon request.

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