Sigma Ships 4K Ultra HD STB SoC With HDR

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Sigma Designs announced that it is now shipping its SMP8762 4K Ultra HD Set-Top Box (STB) System-on-Chip (Soc).

For more information visit: www.sigmadesigns.com

Unedited press release follows:

Sigma Enters Production With Industry’s First UHD Set-Top Box SoC With HDR

Powerful SMP8762 UHD SoC Delivers Advanced High Dynamic Range, 4KTV @ 60fps and Google VP9 UHD Decoding

FREMONT, CA–(Sep 10, 2015) – Sigma Designs® (NASDAQ: SIGM), a leading provider of intelligent system-on-chip (SoC) solutions focused on Internet of Things (IoT), Smart TV and media connectivity markets has entered production with its SMP8762, an Ultra-High Definition (UHD) set-top box SoC with high dynamic range (HDR) support. With the upcoming deployment of ultra-high-definition set-top boxes, service providers will soon be in position to offer selected 4K UHD (Ultra-High Definition) TV services to their subscribers. However, the emergence of HDR technology has created a chain reaction in the video industry, spurring many providers to include HDR in their roll-out of 4K TV to deliver a truly premium visual experience.

High Dynamic Range technology has emerged as a disruptive technology over the past year due to the significant enhancement it delivers to the television viewing experience. Over the past decade, televisions have seen large strides in resolution (number of pixels on the screen) as well as refresh rates (pixels per second), but HDR addresses the third pillar of image quality — the information content per pixel. This third pillar directly addresses the amazing gradients of brightness and color that the human eye is capable of perceiving but heretofore never delivered. In simple terms, our eyes are capable of discerning at least 3 more orders of magnitude of brightness content and double the color content than even today’s UHD televisions are delivering. HDR technology delivers this extra depth of content to raise television video quality to a whole new level — the level our eyes desire.

The SMP8762 is leading the market as the first single-chip solution capable of decoding and displaying UHD HDR content to drive HDR capable UHD televisions planned for availability later this year. The SOC’s system software is optimized for both HDR broadcast or streaming over-the-top (OTT) content utilizing the new HDR standards like HDR-10 (BD UHD) and Dolby Vision. Coupled with a high performance processor and 3D graphics cores, the SMP8762 is geared towards a high quality consumer experience of UHD content with interactive middleware.

Sigma Designs will showcase its SMP8762 processors at IBC in Amsterdam Sept 11-15, Booth BM7.

Key capabilities supported on this leading edge platform include:

• Ultra HD (UHD) Single Chip for 60Hz Smart TV

• 4K Ultra HD (UHD) resolution with High Dynamic Range supporting multiple PQ curves and Wide Color Gamut capabilities including SMPTE 2084/2086, and Dolby Vision EDR.

• HEVC (H.265) UHD Main-10 profile decoding at 60fps,

• Google VP9 UHD decoding

• Trusted Execution Environment and ARM Trust Zone support for content protection

• Integrated UHD HDMI Rx and Tx with HDCPv2.2 content protection

• Integrated Civolution NexGuard forensic UHD watermarking Technology to curb content piracy

• Support for Android and Linux operating systems, including an HTML5 browser engine, media player application, leading STB middleware HALs and DRMs.

The SMP8762 is positioned as a strong player in the space of IP streaming boxes for IPTV and OTT. Support for multiple streaming protocols, an HTML5 or webkit integrated framework and CODECs like HEVC and VP9 prepares it for any new UHD OTT service. Early partnership with leading OTT providers also enable fast time to market for OEMs looking for turnkey OTT solutions.

The SMP8762 also supports many OTA (over-the-air) broadcast standards for Hybrid IP-Broadcast STBs. The popular ARM CPU and GPU complex enables many third party optimized packages for embedded applications or middleware packages. Both open source webkit based browser engines or commercial browser are available. A port of Android-L AOSP is CTS complete for evaluation by OEMs. Development boards and SDK can be requested by STB OEMs.

For more information about Sigma Designs, visit www.sigmadesigns.com.
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About Sigma Designs
Sigma Designs, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIGM) is a world leader in connected media platforms. The company designs and builds the essential semiconductor technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s leading IPTV set-top boxes, DTV, connected media players, residential gateways, home control systems, and more. For more information about Sigma Designs, please visit www.sigmadesigns.com.