Ocean Blue Releases DVB multi-mode software for entry-level NXP Semiconductors STB100 & STB200 hardware platforms

- Ocean Blue Software, the specialist digital TV software developer, has released its DVB software products on NXP's entry-level Nexperia STB100 & STB200 platforms. The software provides an off-the-shelf solution for consumer electronics companies developing entry-level set-top boxes and digital TV products. Functionality that is enabled by this software includes the use of timers, Electronic Programme Guide, favourites list and DVB subtitles.

According to Ken Helps, Managing Director of Ocean Blue Software, "The combination of NXP chipsets and our DVB software products has created an excellent turnkey solution, which consumer electronics companies can now adopt for digital TV products.  Teams of NXP and Ocean Blue engineers working in France, China and the UK proved the success of cross country working, utilising the WEB based collaborative project control system."

Menno Kleingeld, Senior Marketing manager, Set Top Box, NXP Semiconductors said, "Our STB100 and 200 system solutions offer complete platforms for entry level set-top boxes, suited for Terrestrial, Cable and Satellite markets. Together with Ocean Blue's software we are able to offer our customers cost effective solutions with a lot of functionality as well as short time to market."

The Sunrise multi-mode software is one software product running on a single NXP chipset, this allows both  analogue and digital TV broadcasts to be supported.

Ocean Blue has developed two versions of its Sunrise multi-mode software for the STB100. The UK version supports MHEG 1.06 (Freeview "red button" functionality) and requires 16Mb RAM + 2Mb flash memory. A rest of Europe version sacrifices MHEG but supports EBU Teletext and operates in just 8Mb RAM + 1Mb flash.

NXP offers reference designs for DVB-T, DVB-C and DVB-S reception. The STB100 & 200 are NXP's entry-level chipsets, with the accent firmly on reducing time-to-market and design costs. The chipset incorporates the Nexperia MPEG source decoder PNX8300, highly integrated silicon tuners and state-of-the-art channel decoders for terrestrial, satellite and cable reception.

Ideal for entry-level applications such as free-to-air or pay television, the PNX8300 supports all DVB / MPEG-2 compliant transmissions. It delivers excellent STB performance thanks to its 32-bit MIPS CPU. Furthermore, a dedicated transport RISC-based demultiplexer engine and DVB descrambler meet most DVB pay-TV specifications and leave the CPU free to handle other tasks.

About NXP

NXP is a top 10 semiconductor company, founded by Philips more than 50 years ago. Headquartered in Europe, the company has 37,000 employees working in 26 countries across the world. NXP creates semiconductors, system solutions and software that deliver better sensory experiences in mobile phones, personal media players, TVs, set-top boxes, identification applications, cars and a wide range of other electronic devices. News from NXP is located at www.nxp.com.

Ocean Blue Software

Ocean Blue's Voyager software system MHEG-5 & DSM-CC is the standard mandated middleware solution for Freeview digital TV receivers. Voyager is the result of  more than 10 man-year development project and is fully tested and in production.. The MHEG-5 & DSM-CC software was developed in the standard C programming language and is thus portable to many different operating systems and hardware computing platforms.

Ocean Blue's Sunrise is a suite of integrated software products, which provides all the functionality for receiving both analogue and digital video & audio on digital set top boxes and televisions.

Ocean Blue's Surfsoft (a Freeview Playback standard version is available) system software is a content management systems that has been saved on a hard disk-based digital TV device. Surfsoft's many features and functions include time shift, trick modes, search, retrieve, save, record, timed recording and pause.