Equator Technologies has announced that its BSP-15 processor has been chosen to provide advanced multi-format video processing for a new broadband plasma TV system. The company claims to be a leading provider of high-performance, programmable and power-efficient system-on-a-chip (SoC) processors for video streaming and image processing applications.

An official release informs that the company's BSP-15 processor has been adopted by Sony for its new plasma Wega TVs, in models KED-P50HZ1 and KDE-P42HZ1. They will be launched later this year.

The BSP-15 processor was chosen for its video processing performance and for its ability to handle all major video formats for broadcast television and for media on the Internet. Within these Sony TV models, the BSP-15 processor acts as the media accelerator in the media receiver, driving the plasma display and decoding multi-format digital content. The BSP-15 processor is also used for real-time re-encoding of audio and video into a low bit-rate stream, which is delivered wirelessly from the main media receiver to the portable media palette.

Equator's BSP-15 chip also provides video processing in the companion 'Air-Tact' LCD palette of Sony's new plasma Wega TVs. There, the BSP-15 processor acts as a complete video-centric SoC, running an embedded real-time operating system, an Internet browser and performing all media decoding, including reading JPEG images stored on a memory stick.

Equator's BSP-15 processor is a 100 per cent C/C++ programmable, system-on-a-chip solution that is based on proprietary VLIW architecture. The BSP-15 processor claims to be unmatched as a multi-format media-processing engine, with a list of supported codecs that includes Windows Media 9 Series (in standard definition and 720p high definition), H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, RealVideo, DivX, H.263, H.263+, and VP6.

The BSP-15 processor unifies host processor functionalities with media processing capabilities, SDRAM and PCI interfaces, a DES engine, and a rich multimedia I/O system to meet all of the system needs of high performance digital media applications.

With this flexible platform, Consumer Electronics Original Equipment Manufacturers can choose to use the BSP-15 processor as either the industry's most powerful media accelerator in a co-processor environment or in single-chip designs. This will help reduce system cost.