Bisquare has been focused in the area of embedded systems design in the Infotainment area. We have a special focus on digital broadcasting, where we were the first company in the country to develop an indigenous set top box in the year 1999. Ever since, we have been working in this domain, and have been developing technologies with a very special focus on India, as the Indian needs are very special in this domain.

The Objective

The objective was to develop complete Product Technology for manufacturing DVB compliant Set Top Boxes. The technology has been developed with the objective to adapt the solution easily to interface with various front ends - Satellite, Cable and Terrestrial. The current version has been developed to address the market for an entry level Set Top Box for Digital Pay Television services through a Smart Card based authentication. The Product architecture is designed to be scalable to a high-end system.

The first version is available for Satellite based DTH operations.

The development started out with the cable operator Free-To-Air Box. This box was later modified for Direct-To-home user segment while retaining its free-to-air feature. Bisquare developed the customized hardware and software for this version with specific attention towards the needs of the normal viewers and provided features accordingly.

Following are the salient features of this box:

Software Features

• Full Compliance to ISO and DVB MPEG-2 Standards
• Easy-to-Use and Powerful User Interface
• Support for C Band as well as Extended C Band
• TV screen format selection (16:9 / 4:3)
• Frame Freeze via single remote button press.
• Channel information display and carrier Status information display via a single remote button press.
• Support for a maximum of 8 User Categories where each category contains a list of favorite channels selected by user.
• Parental Lock facility available for Channels and extensible for user categories.
• Two independent Passwords:- one for Parental guidance and other for System Setup.
• Support of a maximum of 30 carriers.
• Support for a maximum of 255 channels.
• Support for a maximum of 15 satellites.

Set-top Box Hardware Features

• 22Khz tone selection is needed for the switching between lower and upper Ku band.
• 13V /18V LNB polarization selection · Stereo Audio for high quality audio effect.
• RS - 232 serial data port for upgradation of software in the field and also for factory testing. This port can also be used in case of data broadcasting
• UHF RF Modulator with Antenna In port for support to TVs who do not take Audio video input.
• Fully Functional Infra-Red remote control gives access to all the features
• Multi system RF output (NTSC/PAL) for operation with various Televisions.
• Smart card access ( not activated yet), this is a hook for later when the conditional access will be enabled. Integrating CA will now be a software upgrade and the existing tested hardware can be used.
• Modular system architecture for scalability to Digital Terrestrial and Cable applications. The front-end interface is designed in a manned that either a Satellite/cable or terrestrial tuner can be integrated by just changing the tuner and s/w upgrade.

Now Bisquare is coming up with middle-end and high end version of Set-Top boxes for end-user segment that will have the following features in addition to above features:

Additional Features

• Bilingual OSD Language option (English / Hindi).
• Preview Mode for user favorite lists.
• Analog and Digital Audio Outputs Available. (SPDIF Digital and Analog Stereo)
• Support for CAS enabled at hardware level. This implies that software for CAS may be integrated as per the Service provider, manufacturer or end-user.
• Support for infrared blaster. This makes it possible for STBs to use IR to operate other devices in the home. The most obvious use is controlling an external VCR to tape the programme being played.
• Support for EPG is to be introduced.
• Support for data broadcasting, compliant to ISO and DVB/ETSI specifications, will be introduced.
• On-Field software download (upgrade) feature is in the stage of development

Revised Features

• A Flexible Network Interface Module to support DVB-S, DVB-C & DVB-T along with the support for DVB-CI.
• Support for Ku band enabled at software level.
• Support for SECAM output available along with NTSC and PAL-B, PAL-G, PAL-H, PAL-I and PAL-K.

The preliminary drafts of specifications for this is available for download from here.

Click Here To Download SpecSheet