Broadcom Accelerate TV Channel Change With FastRTV

The transition from analogue to digital television brought many benefits except it is slow when browsing between channels.  Though the slow channel change isn’t enough to make us want to go back it can be frustrating at times.  Broadcom is promising to change this with its recently released FastRTV SoC solution, a channel change acceleration technology for suppliers of STB (set-top box).  Broadcom said FastRTV is will also allow you to change your channels up to 5 times faster.

FastRTV is already being used by Comcast in the US, in its uDTA deployments.  The technology is now available in a wide range of Broadcom(R) system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions for digital cable set-top boxes (STBs) and universal digital transport adapters (uDTAs).

The first Broadcom SoC solution to support FastRTV technology for digital cable TV is the Broadcom BCM7002 cable uDTA SoC.  FastRTV technology within the BCM7002 helps providers make the all-digital experience even better for consumers by providing near instantaneous channel changing.

Broadcom's FastRTV technology provides the following benefits:

• Enables providers to offer services with significantly accelerated channel change speeds by up to 5 times for digital cable STBs and uDTA deployments.
• Minimizes delays or pauses as consumers surf through channels.
• Works with existing conditional access (CA) systems and does not require changes to broadcast streams, which in turn, makes it easier to deploy in both existing and new cable systems.

Broadcom's FastRTV technology is now available in a wide range of cable SD and HD set-top box SoC solutions as follows:

• For Broadcom cable STB solutions, FastRTV is included in the BCM7400, BCM7405, BCM7420, BCM7410, BCM7119, BCM7125, BCM7019 and BCM7025.
• For Broadcom cable DTAs and uDTAs solutions, FastRTV is included in the BCM70xx SD DTA product family and the BCM75xx HD DTA product family.

source: Broadcom