14 DAY TRIAL // Since the telecommunications and cable companies realized the potential market for streaming digital content over high-bandwidth IP connections to customers, everybody wanted to get a piece of that pie. Thus began an invasion of commercials and offers for delivering digital content, on your doorstep. Of course, this idea had its flaws, the digital content which is sent through an, basically, Internet connection isn't safe from being pirated, and it could only be a matter of time before somebody finds a way to bypass their security systems.
So the bright thing to do was to introduce hardware-based devices that could receive the information securely and relay it to the user, without allowing for any tampering or modifications. These devices are the Set Top Boxes (STBs), and their presence has become increasingly necessary in the modern "digital home". One of the components that made STBs possible was the System-on-a-chip (SoC) processor. This chip is made out of more circuits, the idea being that all the components of a computer or other electronic system be integrated into a single integrated circuit (IC).
One of the manufacturers for SoC processors is Intel; they have unveiled an integrated media processor for the consumer electronics market segment, including devices such as set top boxes and networked media players. The Intel CE 2110 Media Processor uses an embedded "1GHz Intel Xscale processor, MPEG-2 and H.264 hardware video decoders, DDR2 memory interface, 2D/3D graphics accelerators", and requires a modular software environment to operate on.
William O. Leszinske, Jr., general manager of Intel's Consumer Electronics Group said: "The Internet is a powerful disruptive opportunity for the CE industry. Intel's work with the CE ecosystem to power new intelligent devices will help accelerate the availability of a new range of exciting Internet-based information and services, and video entertainment experiences for consumers throughout the home."
The capabilities of the Intel CE 2110 Media Processor allow it to combine the processing power of the XScale processor with hardware-based audio/video decoding and I/O components to give the best experience for the home user. But they are not the only ones that benefit from the SoC, Chunghwa Telecom A Taiwan-based telecommunications service provider has taken interest into the media processor for their Multimedia on Demand (MoD) service.
CY Feng, vice president of ASUS Broadband BU said in a statement: "As far as the set top box is concerned, one of the most important capabilities will be processing performance that can scale to meet the requirements of advanced applications and support new services. The Intel CE 2110 Media Processor level of performance is essential for supporting advanced applications and providing headroom for future applications. Intel's platform solution is designed to be a multifunction device, and in this respect, it stands apart from traditional set top boxes. The bottom line is that we can use Intel's new media processor to bring more value to our customers."