(iTers News) – Entropic, a chip maker of semiconductor solutions for the connected home, and Wistron NeWeb Corporation (WNC), a maker of advanced wireless communication products, said that WNC's latest operator-class Low Noise Block (LNB) converter has been approved for use and deployment at Sky Italia. Built with Entropic's EN5288 channel stacking switch, or CSS, the LNB converter delivers more digital entertainment down a single-cable architecture to feed multiple set-top boxes (STBs) and tuners throughout the home.
According to a June 2013 industry report from Digital TV Research, Italian service providers are facing fierce competition as other Pay-TV operators introduce new platforms, launch bundled services and offer advanced commercial offerings. To combat competition, Italian direct broadcast operators (DBS) can proactively make investments in advanced LNBs with CSS technology to mitigate subscriber acquisition costs (SAC) by lowering equipment and installation costs. With this technology they can also increase annual revenue per user (ARPU) by delivering more services and entertainment, from more high definition (HD) channels and video on demand (VOD) to personal video recorders (PVR) — all down a single-cable run.
To enable DBS service providers to be competitive, WNC offers its latest LNB solution using Entropic's highest performance to cost ratio CSS technology, the EN5288. Entropic's technology allows DBS operators to deliver multiple video streams from individual or multiple satellites into single family home (SFH) or multiple dwelling unit (MDU) – over a single cable. This advanced single-cable architecture significantly reduces the cost and complexity of the installation and simplifies STB upgrades by reusing existing cabling in the home or MDU.
"WNC and Entropic continue to evolve the way satellite service is installed in the home; enabling DBS operators to be more competitive in servicing new customers and upgrading their current subscribers," said Jeffrey Gau, president and COO, WNC. "No longer do DBS operators need to run a unique cable from the satellite dish to each tuner or STB. This paradigm shift is significant as the number of HD and PVRs increase in the home. Our new LNB with Entropic's EN5288 chip addresses this growing multi-tuner home transition; ensuring consumers quickly get the content they want in any room and operators reduce the cabling complexity, installation and upgrade costs."
The EN5288 is Entropic's third-generation analog CSS silicon solution. It offers the lowest bill of material (BoM) component count, smallest package size and is Entropic's most power-efficient analog CSS product to date. The EN5288 is a two-input, two-user channel output CSS solution for DBS television applications and works with an input frequency range of 950-2150 MHz.
"The EN5288 is cost optimized to support four tuners in the home, but also offers the scalability DBS service providers want to support up to twelve tuners down a single coaxial cable," said Al Servati, vice president, Marketing, Entropic. "In working with WNC, we can create the most innovative single-cable network to allow DBS operators to future-proof their network topologies by driving multiple HD streams to multiple tuners anywhere in the home."