AT&T Broadband Selects Philips Electronics For Advanced Digital Cable Set-Top Boxes

23-Aug-00

AT&T Broadband and Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG) plan to market Philipsí advanced digital cable set-top boxes to U.S. consumers beginning in 2001, the companies announced.The companies said they are forming a new business alliance with a goal of increasing the competitive retail marketplace for advanced digital cable set-top boxes.The new retail marketplace will spur competition and innovation among world-class technology suppliers, increase choices for consumers, and stimulate the introduction of new broadband video, voice and data services via cable set-tops. This retail alliance will accelerate the innovation in the marketplace. In addition, AT&T Broadband also expects to purchase set-top boxes directly from Philips. The companies have agreed on an initial volume of one million set-tops.""We are pleased to have Philips working with us to help us continue to meet the incredible need for digital video delivery,"" said Tony Werner, Chief Technology Officer for AT&T Broadband. ""Philips continues to demonstrate a superb ability to innovate in consumer electronics equipment. This innovation, combined with Philipsí knowledge of retail distribution channels, will be beneficial as we start to move into retail distribution.""""Philips is excited to be working with AT&T Broadband to create an open and competitive environment,"" said Rob van Oostenbrugge, CEO, Philips Digital Networks. ""World-class suppliers now have a clear entry point upon which to develop innovative new technologies. The ultimate beneficiaries of this alliance will be AT&T Broadband customers, who will soon be able to purchase digital cable set-tops just as they do other consumer electronics products, allowing them to select the services that best suit their interests and needs.""The digital set-top boxes that Philips will provide to AT&T Broadband will accept an OpenCableô compliant point-of-deployment (POD) module. This feature enables separable security, a key requirement for portability. Such portability is important to consumers, as it means that they still will be able to use their set-top box even if they move to a new home. OpenCableô is a Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. (CableLabsÆ) initiative aimed at developing a new generation of set-top boxes that are interoperable with the legacy of proprietary systems already deployed in the United States. The companies have made arrangements to create compatibility with AT&Tís existing headends, based upon the Motorola-GI DES conditional access system, a breakthrough accomplishment for the broadband industry.The Philips open set-top platform is an important step in establishing a new consumer electronics business model, offering several combinations of digital cable, personalized television and Internet access services. This platform, which will be deployed in high-bandwidth cable networks, could lay the foundation for creating a residential gateway and a whole new category of in-home accessories. The Philips digital set-top boxes will also feature the versatile and high-performance TriMediaô programmable media processor to be integrated with AT&T Broadbandís interactive software platform, which together are expected to provide critical technological advantages over conventional digital set-tops. The TriMedia processor is based upon the Nexperia Digital Video Platform (DVP), which incorporates the TriMedia VLIW processor for advanced media processing. This advanced technology will enable broadband cable subscribers to access the most comprehensive menu of interactive services available. The TriMedia processor, developed by Philips, is a special-purpose microprocessor for the real-time processing of audio, video, graphics and communications data streams. The advanced processor is well suited for high-performance Internet-based applications such as streaming media, e-commerce, gaming, and other two-way interactive services as well as a wide variety of new television entertainment services such as video-on-demand and personal video recording employing an internal hard disk drive.The Philips set-top platform is intended to be the catalyst for developing a residential gateway and a whole new category of in-home accessories, including speech recognition input devices, wireless speakers and display devices, cameras for teleconferencing, and voice and data communications products. The Home AV networking specification (HAVi) will be used to provide ease-of-use and application interoperability between the Philips set-top box and connected devices.Category: DTV

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