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San Jose, Calif. - As the TV ads take their toll, more people are signing up for direct-satellite TV receivers. That, naturally, means a booming business for satellite set-top boxes, and so there is a scramble to turn what last year was pretty obscure technology into a commodity product.
Chip vendors have the basics under control and are beginning to compete on features.
The basics are formidable. A satellite receiver needs a low-noise amplifier, down-converter, A/D, demodulator, forward error-correction circuitry and channel-management functions.
The analog components are still resisting integration. But much of the rest of the receiver chain is now getting packed into a single piece of silicon by the advanced ASIC vendors.
The most recent embodiment of these ideas comes from...