Surf's up! Broadcom unveils accelerated channel change technology

There's good news for couch potatoes who like to channel surf. That annoying delay that happens when changing channels should soon be going away. Broadcom (Nasdaq: BRCM) has introduced a channel change acceleration technology that it says improves speeds up to five times.

Called FastRTV, the new technology is built into Broadcom's system on a chip (SoC) silicon for digital cable set-top boxes and universal digital transport adapters (uDTAs). According to a Broadcom news release, Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) is the first service provider to give it a shot in uDTAs as it transitions from analog to all-digital service.

The technology is an important salve cable subscribers who are already experiencing the pain of moving from analog to digital and "a significant benefit in addition to the improved picture quality and increased capacity for advanced services that an all-digital platform offers," said Steve Reynolds, senior vice president of customer premise equipment at Comcast, as quoted in the Broadcom news release.

For more:
- see this news release

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