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Archive for the 'Broadcom' Tag

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Broadcom rescues Irvine schools’ science fair — gummy bears and all

March 1st, 2010, 3:56 pm by

It’s nice to know that Broadcom Corp. is investing locally to nudge kids into engineering careers. The Irvine chipmaker, which supplies chips for iPhones, DVRs and other consumer electronic gadgets, ponied up $7,000 for the Irvine School District’s 29th annual science fair to replace money lost due to budget cuts.

On top of the cash, Broadcom is sending over some of its engineers to hang out with students on Wednesday during the district’s annual science fair, said Broadcom spokeswoman Dana Brzozkiewicz.

Update: The $7,000 is approximately the same budget as prior years.

The science fair includes 384 projects from Irvine’s 30 elementary, middle and high school students. Some of the geekiest that Brzozkiewicz could find: “The Effect of Cell Phone Radiation on the Reproduction of the Yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae” and “An Analysis of Clock Rate and Thermal Scaling in Modern Multi-Core Microprocessors.” The yummiest? “The Diffusion of Gummy Bears.”

This is the first education grant from the new Broadcom Foundation, established to get young people interested in science, technology, engineering and math careers. The organization targets places where Broadcom employees work, like Irvine, where the bulk of the company’s 7,407 workers are based.

“With the state budget crisis necessitating cutbacks at the district level, funding for this year’s Science Fair was in jeopardy. We are so grateful to the Broadcom Foundation and the Irvine Public Schools Foundation for preserving this valuable educational opportunity,” said Dr. Gwen Gross, Superintendent of the Irvine Unified School District, in a statement.

The IUSD Science Fair is Wednesday, March 3, at Northwood High School, at 4515 Portola Parkway in Irvine. Projects can be viewed from noon to 6:30 p.m. An awards ceremony is at 6:45 p.m.

More on Orange County companies:

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Cable TV (really) does want to offer multi-room DVRs

February 12th, 2010, 6:42 am by

Broadcom MoCA chipChances are high that your next TV set-top box will have features like a multi-room DVR, Internet access and home networking — even if you’re a cable TV customer, says Michael Inouye, a TV industry analyst with ABI Research.

In a new report, Inouye projects that there will be 15 million next-generation set-top boxes in the market by 2014. These 15 million boxes will have MoCA, a technology that uses existing coaxial cables to send video to devices throughout the home. While other home networking technologies like Powerline (uses electrical lines)  and HomePNA (uses phone lines), are gunning to be in the next set-top box, Inouye said that MoCA is attracting the TV companies that actually provide the hardware to consumers.

My first thought? Cable companies have long offered set-top boxes with advanced features. But they haven’t enabled them. The USB and eSATA ports on my cable TV box don’t work so I can’t add a hard drive to store more TV shows or view photos. I asked Inouye to tell us what really might happen with future set-top boxes.

“Indeed, you are spot on in regards to cable providers’ previous practices of limiting STB (set-top box) functions. But in many cases just because it’s not ‘active’ doesn’t mean it’s not there, so when we established the forecast we focused on estimating the number of boxes that could support MoCA (e.g. hardware in place) but not necessarily active,” Inouye said in an e-mailed response.

Ahh… so, no MoCA features for cable customers. No, not quite, Inouye said. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Video & TV • Wi-Fi & networking • • • • • • • • • | 15 Comments »

Broadcom not just iPhone supporter, likes Google’s Android too

February 9th, 2010, 2:45 pm by

Broadcom Corp.Irvine chipmaker Broadcom Corp. has fully joined the Android camp and said today that its wireless technologies fully support Google’s mobile operating system.

What does that mean? Conceivably cheaper phones because Broadcom likes to cram several features into one chip. In this case, the company said its series of wireless chips that offer Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and VoIP, are now available for Android phones.

While most Android phones already have these features, manufacturers can now purchase one chip instead of three separate ones. That could decrease the cost of making the phone and/or free up space inside the phone since multiple chips are no longer needed.

On top of the full Android support, Broadcom points out that its chips offer the latest Bluetooth technology, previously unavailable for in Android phones. Broadcom offers Bluetooth 3.0 + HS, which means faster connections of up to 24 mbps. That will come in handy for those who like to share videos, photos or other files between phones or any other mobile devices. Broadcom’s new Android push isn’t just for phones but also tablets, which it will demonstrate next week during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Android manufacturers who add the Broadcom chips will be the first with faster Bluetooth.

Broadcom, of course, has long supported the iPhone and was among the first to provide chips for the revolutionary phone. But now, with analysts expecting Android to be the second most popular mobile software by 2013, Broadcom decided to expand its support.

The company isn’t new to Android. It previously demonstrated support for Android on personal navigation devices; Android chips that combine Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and FM radio; and support for an Android HD camcorder, video player and 12-megapixel camera.

Previously on Broadcom:

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TV set-top boxes lack innovation, says FCC

December 17th, 2009, 4:40 pm by

Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300 HD DVR for Time Warner Cable customers.Spotted: If you haven’t been impressed with the set-top box from your TV provider, neither is the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. It issued a report this week calling set-top box innovation “lacking.”

The observation, as noted by Reuters, was just one of many in the FCC’s ongoing effort to develop a national broadband Internet plan.

“The convergence of television and the Internet is hindered by the lack of innovation in the set top box market,” says the government report.

Read the report
Read the shorter news release

The FCC has about 60 more days before its national broadband plan is due. The reason for calling out set-top box hardware is the FCC feels adding Internet to a box could help the consumers nationwide get Web access.

“Requiring video services providers to supply a small, low-cost, network-interface device whose only function is to bridge proprietary network elements with retail navigation devices,” is one suggestion. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • | 4 Comments »

11 things a DVR should do

November 19th, 2009, 3:25 am by

DVR with Broadcom inside can do 12 things that others can't.Not all digital video recorders are created equal. But there’s no question these DVRs, or TiVo’s, or new fangled VCRs or whatever you want to call them have changed the way many of us watch TV.  If you have such a device, do you even remember what it was like when you couldn’t pause and rewind live TV?

But being consumers, we want more. More storage space, more content, more options. Thing is, more is out there but many of us have no access to these DVRs. But what is more?

I posed the question to Broadcom Corp., the Irvine designer of DVR silicon chips. What should a DVR be able to do these days? Plenty, the company tells me. Here’s a list of what Broadcom DVR chips can do. Keep in mind, this doesn’t mean that DVRs with Broadcom chips have all these features enabled. But this is just a list of what is available today.

11 things a Broadcom DVR can do:

Number 1 stock artUse home Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Bluetooth or MoCA to connect to other devices in the house. You probably know what wireless Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and wired Ethernet are. The newcomer is MoCA, which uses existing coaxial cable running through the house to send high-definition video signals between devices. It’s one way to avoid ripping up walls and installing fiber-optic cables.

Number 2 stock art Enable a Multi-room DVR so households can skip a second DVR at home. All shows are stored on one box, which can be accessed from any room with TV and receiver (i.e., a standard set-top box for most users). Multiple people can watch the same show at the same time on different TVs and pause or rewind without affecting anyone else’s playback. Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse offer one and Cox Communications plans to offer one before the end of the year.

Number 3 stock art Stream content from your cell phone. Record a video on your phone that you want to watch on the big-screen TV? It’s been possible for a few years. Thanks to Digital Living Network Alliance technology, such DLNA-enabled cell phones or computers can stream digital content from one device to another. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • • • • | 8 Comments »

Broadcom’s new 5-in-1 DVR chip

October 27th, 2009, 4:41 pm by

broadcommocachipWhenever Irvine’s Broadcom Corp. unveils a new chip, we know it probably does three things: Combine two or more older chips, use less power and cost less than existing technology.

Its latest chip, announced today, does just that for the home TV’s digital video recorder, the DVR.

The Broadcom’s BCM7125 conceivably can change the DVR world by offering consumers a smaller set-top box packed with all the features the most-advanced DVR offers. Stuff like multi-room viewing, video transfer from cell phone to set-top box and back, slide shows streamed from a home PC, and a plethora of on-screen widgets.

“If you look at the 7125, typically in the basic box there are two tuners, front-end with DOCSIS, HD backend and MoCA,” said Peter Schenitzki, senior product group manager at Broadcom’s Broadband Communications Group.

Essentially, he said, “So five chips are now in one chip.”

On top of this convergence, the chip can cut power consumption by shutting down unused features. An example: When the always-on DVR isn’t recording or broadcasting an HD show, it could shut down the HD decoder. Read the rest of this entry »

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Is that Broadcom in your new TV?

October 12th, 2009, 2:00 am by

LG's Broadband HDTV is powered by Broadcom.If you’ve kept up with the latest in TV technology, you know that many TV manufacturers have either released their first Internet TV or are about to.

But what you may not know is that Irvine’s Broadcom Corp. is providing its ‘connected’ chip to enable Internet in many of these TVs. And it’s overseeing what content gets included.

Features like watching YouTube videos or checking stocks and local weather are activities that TV watchers will get access to in these new TVs.

But integrating Yahoo Widgets into the TV, for example, is not a simple task, said Stuart Thomson, Broadcom’s senior director of product marketing for Digital TV. TVs don’t have as much memory as computers so engineers must work more efficiently, for one thing.

Yahoo Widget, Netflix and other features are now available on some Internet TVs. Pictured is LG's Broadband TV, powered by Broadcom.“We worked very hard on the responsiveness to make sure Yahoo Widgets worked well in an embedded environment,” Thomson said. ”We worked a lot with Yahoo to make this work.”

And Netflix, apparently. The only TV offering Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” streaming service are the LG Broadband TVs, which have Broadcom’s chip inside. The LG TVs went on sale in early summer.

Besides LG TVs, upcoming TVs with Broadcom’s “connected” chip include Sharp, Humax (in Europe) and Zinwell (in Taiwan). The company is also working with Irvine-based Vizio not just on TVs but on Vizio’s noteworthy QWERTY remote control. (Other TV manufacturers with Internet TVs include Sony, Samsung and Panasonic.)

Read the rest of this entry »

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Broadcom plus Microsoft means better AT&T U-verse TV

September 11th, 2009, 12:00 pm by

Microsoft Mediaroom

Correction, added Oct. 8, 2009: Since this was an interview conducted over e-mail, some quotes were attributed incorrectly. Corrected story is below.
———————————————–

News that Irvine chipmaker Broadcom Corp. unleashed a new chip – the Broadcom 7405 – may make your eyes glaze. But if you’re totally into TV, Broadcom’s contribution could help you get more out of your paid TV service.

The new chip powers second-generation Microsoft Mediaroom set-top boxes. In Orange County, AT&T U-verse is the only company offering Microsoft’s software to power its set-top boxes.

If AT&T integrates the chip into the second  generation boxes, subscribers can look forward to “substantial increase in performance,” according to Broadcom (this statement was previously attributed to Microsoft).

“The Broadcom 7405 is the first second generation (system on a chip, or SoCs) being deployed…,” said Steve Koepp, Microsoft’s senior manager, business development of TV, video and music business, in an e-mail. “As mentioned in the releases, this is important as it is enabling choice … which drives competition.”

Here’s a more technical take on Microsoft and Broadcom’s chip from EETimes Europe: “Broadcom touts MS Mediaroom certification at IBC”

The new chip also improves integration of Internet services so we may see Facebook, Twitter and other Internet applications show up on Mediaroom-friendly boxes.

I’m not a U-verse TV customer because it’s not available in my city and I’m unfamiliar with the specific features on the system. Existing U-verse customers can help verify what is already available. According to Microsoft, these are some features offered with the current Microsoft Mediaroom technology:

  • Microsoft Mediaroom offers six-screen TV viewing.Anytime Recording: Rewind or restart a show currently airing that you didn’t record. Also, you can scroll backwards in the Guide to watch a previously aired show through the video on demand library.
  • Anywhere Recording: Extends DVR capabilities to all TVs in the house so every show recorded can be accessed by connected TVs. (U-verse currently offers this multi-room DVR.)
  • Remote recording: Set your DVR to record from any PC or mobile phone (currently offered by U-verse).
  • Multiview: Watch up to six different channels at one time (see image on right).
  • Media Sharing: Built-in ability to access photos, music from computers or other devices on the home network.

More TV news:


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Posted in: Internet • Video & TV • • • • • • • • • • • | 3 Comments »

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