Horizon Semiconductors sets in motion next generation location-free universal HD-DVD/Blu-Ray decoder/transcoder SoC

HERZLIYA, Israel -- November 19th, 2007 --Horizon Semiconductors, a leading provider of highly integrated silicon solutions that enable secure video and audio compression & transmission for the consumer electronics and home entertainment markets, announces the immediate availability of the industry's first universal System-On-a-Chip (SoC) solution enabling dual channel native 1080/60p decoding, encoding and transcoding for next generation media players/recorders supporting the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray™ optical disc formats (as well as legacy red laser DVD format), iVDRs, place shifting boxes and location-free TV markets requirements on a single platform.

Horizon's Hz7120 HD-DVD/Blu-Ray SoC supports wide range of features and capabilities including conformance to leading video compression standards such as native high-definition 1080/60i & 1080/60p profiles of AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2 and DV/HDV, leading audio compression standards such as DTS-HD, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD, as well as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray HDi and BD-J (BD-Java) interactive technologies. The Hz7120 is provided with a comprehensive software stack compliant with both Blu-ray & HD DVD specifications, and a reference hardware platform designed to significantly accelerate OEM/ODM development cycle.

"Consumers are not really sure which player format will prevail, and will naturally wait for lower cost native 1080/60p universal HD-DVD/Blu-Ray playback & recording platform", said Amir Morad, President and CEO of Horizon Semiconductors. "Consumers also want the flexibility of watching content wherever they like, and will therefore naturally prefer devices incorporating higher quality, low bitrate transcoding & integrated iVDR support, as offered in Horizon's Hz7120 SoC."

Product Information

The Hz7120 is designed with the highest level of integration, embedding a variety of cutting edge technologies such as:

• Powerful multi stream decoder and encoder engines, supporting real-time dual channel HD decoding simultaneously with HD encoding/transcoding, using leading compression standards including: H.264 (AVC) Main and High Profile up to Level 4.2, VC-1 (SMPTE 421M) Advanced Profile @ Level 3, DV, HDV, MPEG-2 MP@HL and MPEG-4 at resolutions up to 1080/60p (1920x1080, 60 frames/sec) and bit rates of up to 50Mbps per channel, compliant with the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray optical disc formats.

• Advanced display processor enabling multiple plane true color blending and HD Picture-in-Picture (PiP), flexible resizing, motion adaptive high-definition de-interlacing, and advanced motion-compensated picture enhancement.

• High definition (1920x1080), powerful 2D and 3D graphics accelerator with dedicated high definition sub-picture decoder and font rendering engines, supporting all HD-DVD and Blu-Ray graphics modes as well as popular graphics standards such as X Windows System and OpenGL.

• Still image decoder & Thomson Multimedia's Film Grain Technology (FGT) accelerators, compliant with HD-DVD specifications.

• Multi-channel multi-format audio encoder, decoder and special audio effects processor, supporting all HD-DVD and Blu-Ray standards and operational modes such as: Dolby® Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, DD+ to DD conversion, Dolby TrueHD, DTS/DTS-HD, MPEG1 Layer I and II, MP3, HE-AAC v2, WMA pro, simultaneous primary and secondary stream decoding/encoding in up to 7.1 channels per stream, mixing, down mixing and Karaoke.

• High performance application CPU with MMU dedicated exclusively for running standard operating systems such as Linux or Microsoft Windows-CE as well as enabling customer's specific applications, in addition to a dedicated co-processor designed to materially offload the main application CPU.

• Multi-stream high bandwidth transport processor, designed to process program & transport streams from DVD, HDD or IP network.

• Wide variety of advanced connectivity and peripherals including 10/100/1G Ethernet, USB 2.0, IDE/ATAPI, SMPTE-292, Flash, I2C, SPI/SSI, UART and others.

• DVI/HDMI output with integrated HDCP security.

• IEEE 1394 (FireWire) with integrated DTCP security supporting direct camcorder & digital movie camera content streaming.

• iVDR interface with integrated SAFIA content protection scheme.

• IR & UHF Remote control processor supporting IR/UHF keyboard and IR-Blaster.

• World-class security processor with embedded secure OTP memory, enabling complete content protection in strict compliance with the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray standards such as AACS and BD+, as well as numerous other CA/DRM schemes commonly used in the consumer electronics environment.

• Powerful, easy to use API, with the ability to accelerate and off-load host application code, as well as comprehensive universal optical disc (UOD) software stack supporting legacy & advanced blue laser disk profiles.

"By integrating our advanced encoding & display technologies into our existing universal HD-DVD/BluRay solutions, Horizon is able to offer the most comprehensive DVD content creation, playback & streaming technologies, in a single low cost integrated silicon", said Leonid Yavits, Chief Technology Officer of Horizon Semiconductors. "Hz7120 compelling offering that combines dual channel native 1080/60p decoding support for both high-definition optical formats, along with encoding/transcoding capability, together with our powerful 2D/3D graphics & display processing, iVDR support, sophisticated HDi and BD-Java acceleration engines and comprehensive software stack, will allow manufacturers to introduce the ultimate next generation location-free media players/recorders."

To facilitate faster time-to-market, Horizon is also announcing the immediate availability of the HzR7120 reference design kit. This fully operational HD-DVD/Blu-ray development system includes software support for legacy & advanced blue-laser disk profiles, as well as PCB schematics and documentation.

About Horizon Semiconductors

Horizon Semiconductors is a leading provider of highly integrated silicon solutions that enable secured video and audio compression & transmission for the consumer electronics and home entertainment markets. Using proprietary technologies and advanced design methodologies, Horizon designs, develops and supplies complete system-on-a-chip solutions and related hardware and software applications. Horizon's diverse product portfolio includes solutions for digital cable, satellite and IPTV Set-top boxes, DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players and recorders, HDTV, Digital Video Recorders and Home Media Centers.
Horizon is headquartered in Herzliya, Israel, and may be contacted at +972-77-2020400 or at www.horizonsemi.com.