Broadcom Chipset for Satellite Bandwidth

Broadcom recently came out with a chipset that it says can increase channel offerings for satellite TV companies while using existing satellite bandwidth. The company says its new BCM4500 Advanced Modulation Receiver and BCM3440 CMOS Satellite can give satellite TV broadcasters a bandwidth improvement of up to 50 percent compared to today's digital video broadcast satellite (DVB-S) transmissions. The chipset allows DBS operators to deliver three high-definition TV (HDTV) channels over a single satellite transponder instead of the two channels currently available. Satellite TV broadcasters can also use the technology to transmit a greater number of HDTV channels without hardware swapping on the consumer end. The chipset is adaptable to current industry set top boxes that were manufactured with an expansion port. Broadcom's BCM4500 receiver implements 8PSK (Phase Shift Keying) modulation along with advanced Forward Error Correction based on turbo codes for low-power, reliable communications. It supports BPSK, QPSK, 8PSK and 16QAM modulation for advanced modulation satellite systems and legacy QPSK systems and offers provides variable rate operation from 1-30 Mbaud. Other features include an integrated microcontroller for configuration, acquisition, and performance monitoring, and a host interface that operates via high-level API to reduce host software development time. The BCM4500/BCM3440 chipset is currently sampling and is priced at $20 for volume quantities.