NEC Electronics, Viaccess and 27M Technologies reduce time to market of Pay TV set top box designs

NEC Electronics, a leading developer and supplier of semiconductor products, Viaccess, a leader in conditional access for pay television and protection of digital content over broadcast and broadband networks, and 27M Technologies, a hardware and software design house expert in the field of STB and DTV, announced today the availability of a complete cost optimized manufacturer’s kit based on NEC Electronics’ EMMA2SL and EMMA2SL/P MPEG2 Digital TV Processors, which drastically reduces the time to market of STBs which incorporate Viaccess CA technology meeting today’s advanced security anti-piracy standards.

Viaccess and 27M aim to increase service operators’ confidence level and choice by promoting a pre-certified, manufacturing-ready but still customizable STB design. With this approach the sophisticated and usually time-consuming design tasks and certification process needed to bring a pay TV receiver to mass production are reduced to the minimum.

A complete hardware kit, schematics and material list up to PCB layout, tested to production level, optimized for low cost and reusability and based on the low cost EMMA2SLx LSIs, is available from NEC Electronics.

27M is offering a reference software combination of the 27M DVB Software stack and Viaccess ACS3.0 Conditional Access which has already passed the Viaccess Certification Process. The Viaccess certification process  guaranties that the Set Top Box platform meet the highest level of compatibility with the Viaccess Content protection mechanism.

“Viaccess listened once more to it’s client’s expectations”, says François Moreau de Saint-Martin, Viaccess CEO ,”The partnership set forth creates a brand new approach to the STB business by dramatically shortening the lead time needed to design and bring to the market cost effective and high quality STBs”.

“The ever increasing need for better time to market and low cost design has to be met with new approaches. With this focused design based on the proven and widely deployed 27M DVB stack, STB manufacturers and operators can enjoy a high quality solution, with very short lead time and excellent support through the products whole life time“ says Jan Mårtensson, VP Products and Technology 27M technologies.

“NEC Electronics has built a formidable reputation, experience and market share in delivering complete digital STB solutions” stated Daniel Tannière, general manager Communications and Consumer Business Unit. “This collaboration brings an additional valuable benefit to manufacturers wanting to develop rapidly CA-enabled STBs on NEC Eelctronics' EMMA architecture.”

# # #

About NEC Electronics
NEC Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723) specializes in semiconductor products encompassing advanced technology solutions for the high-end computing and broadband networking markets, system solutions for the mobile handset, PC peripherals, automotive and digital consumer markets, and platform solutions for a wide range of customer applications. NEC Electronics Corporation has 25 subsidiaries worldwide including NEC Electronics America, Inc. (www.am.necel.com) and NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH (www.eu.necel.com). For additional information about NEC Electronics worldwide, visit www.necel.com.

Media Contact
NEC Electronics Europe, Oliver Luettgen, + 49-211-6503-1469, pr@eu.necel.com

About Viaccess
Viaccess S.A., delivers solutions for digital pay television and secured content distribution. Its mission is the development, production and marketing of Conditional Access and DRM-based systems for all types of contents and services, for every kind of broadcast (satellite, cable, terrestrial, MMDS) and broadband networks, fixed (DSL) and mobile. Viaccess has been successfully deployed in 30 countries world-wide, on more than 80 digital platforms including multi-channel providers and digital content distributors. Viaccess is European Leader for IPTV protection (MRG IPTV Market Leader Report, March 2006 & September 2007). For more information: www.viaccess.com

Contact
Doublet Céline T +33 1 44 45 64 65 – celine.doublet@viaccess.com

About 27M Technologies
27M Technologies is a software and hardware design house based in Mjärdevi Science Park in Linköping, Sweden. 27M was founded by former employees from Nokia and have extensive experience gained from having delivered many successful products in the digital TV industry. The highly qualified staff is able to take on both hardware and software design contract work and projects ranging from specific modules to complete turnkey solutions such as a complete STB or iDTV platform. The company's core expertise is in the fields of DVB and DTV product design, embedded Linux kernel, device driver development and real time critical applications development in general.

Media Contact
27M Technologies, Jan Mårtensson, Vice President Products & Technology, +46 (0) 13 21 81 21, jan.martensson@27m.com