IBM Develops Interactive TV Set-Top Box

IBM has announced that it has integrated many of the components of a digital television set-top box (STB) onto a single chip. This integration is aimed at lowering the cost of manufacturing STB devices and allow cable and satellite companies to offer new services to customers, such as interactive digital TV, telephone services and Internet access, all from a standard TV set.The digital audio and video subsystem, according to the company, delivers the high-quality sound and video that are expected of advanced digital television. Further, with the new chip capability, graphical user interfaces can be improved for next generation interactive applications, such as video-on-demand, games and electronic commerce.The multi-functional single-chip solution combines a 401 PowerPC engine, MPEG audio and video decode systems, on-board caches, an on-chip memory, and numerous peripheral units such as IEEE 1284, I2C interface and smart card interface.IBM has well over one million PowerPC-based, digital STB decoders deployed to date with more than 100 patents in video.