Ultra HD STB and gateway reference design from MaxLinear and ST

MaxLinear and STMicroelectronics have announce a reference design for Ultra HD set-top boxes (STB) and gateways for satellite pay-TV operators worldwide. The reference design uses MaxLinear’s MxL5xx family of satellite Full-Spectrum Capture (FSC) receivers, and ST’s pin-compatible STiH312 “Cannes” and STiH412 “Monaco” set-top-box system-on-chip (SoC) decoders. The platform supports a full array of end products, from HD HEVC-ready STBs with multiple-channel decoding to high-end servers with “4K” Ultra HD resolution and HEVC decode, along with the display and real-time transcoding of numerous HD streams simultaneously. Both device families are pin-compatible, making the reference design scalable from four to eight channels and flexible to support either full HD or 4K Ultra HD with or without transcode. The platform can also be adapted for cable MSOs using the pin-compatible MxL2xx family of cable FSC multi-channel receivers. The FSC front-end allows satellite operators to support a range of multi-channel features, including fast channel-change time, video streaming to multiple televisions or IP devices, flexible record/watch combinations and progressive VOD in background. Optional terrestrial front-end modules based on MaxLinear’s market-leading terrestrial receiver technology can be added to the platform to enable capture of over-the-air terrestrial broadcast channels...