Synaptics, a developer of human interface solutions, has partnered with industry-leaders in the development of a comprehensive turnkey platform designed to enable television service providers to quickly deploy cost effective and innovative Pay TV services to address the rapidly expanding Android TV market. This partnership includes Synaptics’ market-leading VS-550 (UHD) and VS-420 (FHD) multimedia processor SoCs running iWedia’s STB software stack, and STB hardware from Tonly, a world-class consumer electronics ODM.

Time-to-market and cost is critical for Pay TV service providers. This collaboration will enable a “ready to deploy” solution that includes key pre-certifications and quality assurance (QA), thereby dramatically reducing the time required to deploying new set-top-boxes in consumer homes. Android TV is rapidly growing, and its adoption is global because operators see the opportunity to increase average revenue per user (ARPU) through the support of numerous applications and services that are available on Android TV’s open platform. This solution also simplifies over-the-air (OTA) upgrades for new Android revisions, thus reducing the service operator’s operating expenditures (OPEX) for product maintenance.

“Synaptics is the global Android TV market leader that has been deploying advanced multimedia processor technology in service provider set-top-boxes over many generations. Our innovative and complete line of powerful VideoSmart UHD/FHD processors, along with our turnkey partners, empowers operators with a high performance and swift time-to-market solution backed by a cost-effective platform to address the rapidly expanding Android TV marketplace,” said Huibert Verhoeven, senior vice president and general manager, IoT Division, Synaptics.

This new Android TV turnkey platform addresses a worldwide operator footprint with proven digital video broadcasting (DVB) and IPTV software from iWedia, a company focused on software and services for connected TV devices. The platform supports OTT, IPTV, and Hybrid (DVB-T2/C2/S2) set-top-box architectures. Support for different CAS systems ensures the highest level of content and network security. The collaboration between Synaptics and iWedia ultimately simplifies the service operator’s ability to deploy Android TV end-to-end services.

“iWedia is extremely pleased to collaborate on this game-changing solution with Synaptics that addresses a critical market requirement. As an integral part of the turnkey solution, our software adds broadcast and multicast support to Android TV, thus allowing customers a more seamless integration project and a much quicker time-to-market for new customized set-top-boxes based on Synaptics’ industry premier VS-550 Android TV SoC,” said Nikola Teslić, CTO at iWedia.

With hardware expertise from Tonly, the turnkey platform positively impacts the operator’s success in profitably scaling-up and upgrading the subscriber base to Android TV set-top-boxes by minimizing service operator’s CAPEX. The hardware platforms from Tonly are power- and cost-optimized with innovative form-factors to enhance operators’ brand identity in consumer living rooms.

“We are excited to leverage our manufacturing expertise to play an important role in the massive Android TV deployments occurring worldwide. Our selection of Synaptics’ market-leading VideoSmart SoCs enable our ability to offer truly innovative and cost effective smart home devices, and we look forward to our continued partnership with Synaptics,” said David Huang, senior vice president, Tonly

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