CES 2009: Silicon Image Pitches Chips For HD Home Networks
Semiconductor Maket To Promote ‘LiquidHD’ As Standard For Distributing High-Definition Content
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 1/8/2009 10:00:00 AM
Las Vegas -- Semiconductor maker Silicon Image is angling to set the standard for distributing HD content to multiple devices throughout the home, with the launch Thursday of a chip-based architecture it has dubbed “LiquidHD.”
(Click here for MCN's complete CES coverage.)
LiquidHD, making its debut here at CES, is a series of protocols designed to let consumers quickly and easily access HD content and applications from any source device to compatible cable set-tops, TVs, home theater systems, PCs and portable consumer electronics.
The protocols define control functions, hardware-based content security and autodiscovery of LiquidHD-enabled devices. One application for LiquidHD is multiroom DVR -- such as pausing a program on the TV in the living room and resuming it on the set in the bedroom.
In a statement, Comcast chief technology officer Tony Werner said: “Silicon Image’s technology comes at the right time as the number of TVs and other consumer-facing devices capable of receiving video over an IP network continues to grow. While Silicon Image's technology could be used to enable multiroom DVRs, its real benefit could be its ability to help get cable providers’ content and applications to multiple consumer devices.”
Silicon Image is positioning LiquidHD as a video-optimized alternative to other approaches to distributing content within the home, including the standard promoted by the Digital Living Network Alliance. DLNA is a consortium of 250 consumer-electronics makers, computer companies and service providers whose members include Comcast, Microsoft, Cisco, Motorola, Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Intel and Macrovision.
“The problem with previous approaches is that they were based on a PC architecture,” Silicon Image director of product marketing Rob Tobias said. “Consumers electronics are really a different breed. We slimmed this down so we could run this on silicon.”
The LiquidHD protocols are designed to run over any Internet Protocol-based networks, including Ethernet, powerline, Wi-Fi and coaxial cable, such as networks that use the Multimedia Over Coax Alliance standard.
A key piece of the LiquidHD launch is Silicon Image’s SiI6100 HD display processor, an integrated system-on-chip that incorporates a high-definition and standard-definition video decoder for H.264, MPEG-2 and VC-1 video formats. The LiquidHD protocols are built into the chip, which is scheduled to be sampling in the second quarter of 2009.
Silicon Image also will release a LiquidHD developer’s kit for implementing the technology in residential gateways, master set-top boxes, Blu-ray Disc players and DVRs.
The company has not announced any licensing agreement for LiquidHD. Tobias said he expects products using the technology to be announced in 2010.
Silicon Image presented the processor-based approach to extending video services to multiple devices in the home at CableLabs’ summer conference last August in Keystone, Colo., where attendees voted it “best new product idea” for the cable industry.
Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Silicon Image helped develop HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface), which is widely used in HDTVs, HD set-tops and other devices.
The company plans to promote LiquidHD as an open international standard, in the hopes that it takes off the way HDMI did. Tobias said Silicon Image will form an industry consortium this year around the technology.
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