Although NXP has not disclosed further details of its Windows CE 6.0-based IP-STB reference design, the platform may be a variant of the STB810 reference design introduced in mid-2005, prior to NXP being spun out of Philips. That design is based on the Nexperia PNX8550 Home Entertainment Engine, a multi-core system-on-chip (SoC) processor that includes a MIPS32 CPU core along with dual TriMedia media processing cores. The PNX8550 can simultaneously demux and decode two SD or one HD video streams.


STB810 reference design block diagram
According to Giel Rutten, senior VP of NXP's Home business unit, "The key to driving global adoption of IPTV is the IP-enabled set-top box, which acts as the gate to unlimited content between the outside world and the home."

Ilya Bukshteyn, Microsoft's director of Windows Embedded marketing, suggested that NXP's new Windows CE-based IP-STB platform will "help manufacturers to build set-top boxes that enable consumers to interact with TV in a completely new way, by unifying all types of entertainment and Internet media into a simple, user-driven experience."

In related news, Interactive Television Networks (ITVN) recently announced that it is nearing mass deployment of a new IP-STB running Windows CE, based on NXP's STB810 reference design. The new IP-STB is the successor to a previous, Unix-based design, the company said.

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