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 e-mail, 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.