The Future of CBN Smart Devices in the Smart Home

[Beijing, China, June 3, 2021]China Broadcasting Network (CBN) connects people to a wide range of content and exciting entertainment, and brings about improvements to quality of life. As part of its aim to accommodate the diversifying demands of hundreds of millions of households, CBN is now innovating its basic service package and refined operations system based around the smart TV.

CBN has witnessed several paradigm shifts, from analog-to-digital conversion and smart broadcasting and television to integrated operations of digital audiovisual services, broadband services, and next-generation mobile communications. Integral for audiovisual services, digital TV STBs have upgraded from SD, HD, and 4K to 8K UHD intelligent convergence devices, and will be deployed on a commercial scale. CBN is also undergoing a transformation from being a specialist in audiovisual operation services to being a specialist in multi-service integrated services that serves numerous digital smart homes.

Meeting the Needs for a More Personalized and Ultimate Experience

Consumers expect the smart home of tomorrow to provide a personalized living space with devices and services that are tailored to their specific needs. This brings new opportunities and challenges for CBN. Backed by 15 years of development, HiSilicon will continue to work with industry partners to provide all-scenario, smart, and immersive smart home chipset solutions and various smart devices for CBN.

Regardless of how the home changes in terms of appearance, how it is expected to feel remains unchanged: a safe, comfortable living space where one can feel completely at home. However, the smart home of today falls short of this expectation. It is still in the initial connected stage where smart devices can be controlled and configured from smartphones but lack the ability to collaborate with each other. This drawback is caused by inconsistencies between protocols used by different suppliers. With just interconnectivity at the application layer, it results in resource sharing at the bottom layer, such as computing power and perception resources, not being particularly effective. To compensate for the weak computing power on the device side, cloud computing is leveraged to deliver smart features, but this results in a long response latency. The long latency when sharing local audio and video leads to a poor user experience, and uploading privacy data to the cloud also incurs data leakage risks. All these issues — from siloed home devices to a poor user experience and difficulty in controlling devices — discourage consumers from paying extra for smart home services.

Duan Xiaoming, Marketing Director of HiSilicon (Shanghai), at CCBN 2021 BDF

HiSilicon Teams up with Partners to Deliver an Immersive Audiovisual Experience

HiSilicon powers industry partners with cutting-edge 8K chipsets for smart convergence devices. The UHD STB chipset Hi3796CV300 and UHD smart TV chipset Hi3751V900 combine smart media communication and hardware resources, such as the UHD decoding engine, PQ engine, dual-core Hi-Fi audio DSP, 2D graphics acceleration, and hardware hybrid rendering coprocessor, to create a next-level audiovisual experience.

The HiSilicon 8K chipsets are powerful in decoding (with support for advanced AVS3, H.265, and VC1 standards and 8K@120 fps decoding performance), nimble in audiovisual capabilities (8K MEMC, 8K SR, HDR Vivid, and 3D audio), and secure (ChinaDRM and National Cryptography Administration-approved cryptographic algorithms). They are packed to the brim with impressive features: cinema-grade audiovisuals, low-latency 8K gameplay, and an immersive punch with multi-view and free view, bringing sporting events, concerts, and important events straight to the living rooms of consumers.

HiSilicon's Cross-Device Collaboration, Intelligent Interactions, and All-Scenario Services

HiSilicon proposes a new paradigm for the smart home: cross-device collaboration, intelligent interactions, and all-scenario services, which are bolstered by distributed capabilities. In the future, smart STBs and smart TVs will become the computing center of the smart home. HiSilicon draws on high-performance CPUs, GPUs, proprietary Da Vinci multi-core heterogeneous architecture with the NPU and 4 TOPS computing power, and dedicated, highly collaborative architecture to build a computing platform with a higher performance. When coupled with multimodal perception solutions such as AI UHD smart vision and AI sound pickup and noise reduction, and connectivity solutions such as PLC-IoT and WiFi-IoT, the platform functions as an intelligent computing center to deliver cross-device distributed capabilities and resource pooling for smart homes.

Bolstered by 8K and AI, the HiSilicon intelligent computing center also powers ecosystem partners with all-in-one smart home features, including distributed capabilities, house-wide connectivity, and low-latency technologies.

HiSilicon will pioneer HarmonyOS Connect to drive smart home devices to new heights through distributed capabilities — application framework, soft bus, data management, security, and more. The distributed capabilities enable devices in various forms to reinforce each other. Such devices include smart STBs, smart TVs, mini-LED displays, smart home centers, interactive whiteboards (IWBs), smart monitors, and AR portable terminals.

In the smart home space, HiSilicon will continue to partner with industry stakeholders to provide scene-specific immersive audiovisuals and turn the smart home into an environment where technology and individuality can go hand in hand for each family member.