NXP Launches New Smart Card Reader for Growing pay-TV Market

Building on NXP’s heritage in this market, the company has shipped over 500 million reader ICs to date, resulting in the product architecture becoming the reference standard across the industry. NXP’s strength in cryptography and security and its leading position within the markets for eGovernment and Banking has enabled the company to create a smart card reader which supports the required high data rates for the secure communication in these applications.

“The growth in digital TV and the trend towards traditional telecoms providers offering ‘triple-play’ solutions, including TV as well as mobile and broadband services has dramatically increased the number of companies offering pay-TV services.” said Peter Yaxley, Director of Consumer Devices, NDS Europe. “To meet the growing demand for pay-TV, broadcasters are looking for cost-effective technology solutions, including set-top boxes that are able to decode highly encrypted TV signals at a lower cost”

Since NXP entered the market in 1995, the company has established itself as a leading player and innovator for smart card interfaces in pay-TV and payment applications and has become a trusted partner to the main conditional access providers in pay-TV,” said Chris Feige, general manager, Near Field Communication, NXP Semiconductors. “The shift to digital broadcast has opened a major opportunity for companies offering premium content and new, innovative services. NXP’s latest smart card reader, the TDA8034, is a response to the needs of the industry providing a cost-competitive solution specially designed for set-top boxes, which provides high levels of protection to the smart card and the system in the growing pay-TV market.”

Designed for multiple regions, the TDA8034 is cost-optimized for both the domestic Japanese market as well as the standard worldwide set-top box market. The product has also been designed to consume less power than similar products on the market in both active mode and power-down mode.

In addition to pay-TV the TDA8034 smart card interface can be incorporated into devices such as PCs to provide higher levels of security for logical access, eGovernment and payment applications. The compact form factor of the product can also be used to support encrypted TV on non-traditional devices such as mobile phones.

The TDA8034 is currently sampling with major customers and volume production is starting end of Q3 2009.