Overview The set-top box is driving the digital revolution right into your living room. Your fingertips now command a wealth of high quality digital information and digital entertainment, right from your favorite armchair. The set-top box revolutionizes home entertainment by providing vibrant television images with crystal clear sound, along with email, Web surfing, along with customized information such as stock quotes, weather and traffic updates, on-line shopping, and video-on-demand, right through a traditional television. As the set-top box matures, it will also provide some or all home networking capabilities, and become the residential gateway of the future. Market Research There is a considerable amount of uncertainty as to how the set-top box market will develop. Many industry experts predict that set-top boxes will evolve into home multimedia centers, possibly forming the hub of the home network system and the primary access for consumers to connect to the Internet. The set-top box market is very dynamic and will change dramatically over the next few years. We are already seeing a convergence of technology with equipment connected to the television, such as adding hard drives for television program storage and instant replay. What is clear is that the set-top box market is growing at a very dramatic rate, and when markets are so dynamic and the future is very unpredictable, decreased time-to-market and the ability to upgrade very quickly is imperative for a successful product. The Cahners In-Stat Group predicts an increase in set-top box shipments from 32.9 million units in the year 2000 to 44.2 million units in 2004. This equates to set-top box sales of $9.1 billion in 2000 increasing to $16.9 billion in 2004. Xilinx Solutions The Spartan-II programmable logic solutions provide the cutting edge to bring products first to market, while having the ability to remotely add features to the set-top box already deployed in the home. Hence, whatever happens in the years ahead, Xilinx FPGAs will play an increasingly important role in the consumer systems of tomorrow. As set-top box increase in functionality as residential gateways, they will support multiple broadband access points and home networking interfaces. Spartan-II FPGAs provide system integration and interconnectivity to these interfaces, hence providing decreased time-to-market, increased time-in-market and the rapid product proliferation in this market. Please view the presentation to see how Xilinx solutions can help you build products for this fast evolving market place.