Taiwan's Ali Corporation, a leading Set-Top Box (STB) system-on-chip (SoC) solution provider, has announced the availability of its cable Pay-TV STB solution, M3281, and will demonstrated it at the CSTB 2012, Moscow. The M3281 is ALi’s second generation advanced security SoC targeted to provide the STB industry and cable operators with an ideal solution for content distribution at the highest level of security and optimal bill of materials (BOM) costs.  

In a package size of 13x13mm, the ALi M3281 is a DVB-C SoC supporting J.83 Annex A/B/C integrated with QAM demodulator, standard definition MPEG2/H.264 decoder, TV encoder, and embedded CPU. The M3281 is features  an advanced security engine compliant with leading CAS and provides hardware security for conditional access in Pay-TV set-top boxes. M3281 is also equipped with a USB2.0 host, enabling support for secure time-shift and PVR functions. The SIP version of M3281 with DRAM and flash memory is also supported.

As analog to digital broadcast migration is underway in most parts of the world, creating a demand for secure, reliable STB solutions, ALi is targeting cable operators around the globe, especially those who engage in large-scale analog to digital migration in emerging countries such as Russia, India, Latin America, and others.

“ALi has reached over 250 million cumulative shipments of STB chipsets to the retail and emerging country Pay-TV markets...The Pay-TV industry is a strategic focus of ALi’s business, and we are progressively gaining market share in this segment," said Tony Chang, General Manager of ALi’s International Business Unit. added Tony Chang.

M3281 is sampling now upon request and will be in mass production in the second quarter of 2012.