Digital home opens its doors

Previewing the digital home of the future, NXP Semiconductors used its Connected Living Showcase to demonstrate some of the latest ‘silicon on tv’ technologies and how it is set to enhance the digital home experience for both the businesses driving the industry and for the consumers at its core. Located within the Southampton based Millbrook Technology Campus, the NXP site shows how the UK is an innovation hub by allowing smaller UK technology vendors to use and benefit from the multiple resources on offer at Millbrook. It also provides office and industrial space to suit the needs of regional business and address the demand for high quality incubation space, as well as offering tenants a wide range of additional services. NXP’s site services and quality manager, Steve Delaney has been instrumental in turning the campus idea in to a reality. He claims the company is developing a new campus to encourage a Millbrook based innovation eco system or cluster. “NXP is all about vibrant media technology,” he explained, “and we want to ensure a better network, enhance NXP’s brand and proactively engage with the local community. The Millbrook campus will act as a way of building bridges into the three levels of the academic world: universities, technology colleges and high schools.” According to NXP’s strategic marketing manager Paul Martin, the Connected Living Showcase offers the company an exclusive environment in which to demonstrate technology in a more relaxed setting. Rather than produce a sterile demonstration in a laboratory, NXP provides visitors with a feeling of how connected living can fit into their lives. “We built this environment because we strongly believe the challenge with the connected living experience has less to do with the technology and more to do with how it fits into the consumers’ environment, its reliability and interoperability, and how easy it is to use.” NXP previewed it new PNX5100 ‘silicon on tv’ technology to show how it can enable the full HD experience on moving pictures. It’s hoped that this technology will allow manufacturers to differentiate themselves by producing hdtv sets that display vivid colours, smooth movement and optimum picture quality – even when parts of the image are moving very rapidly. NXP says the PNX5100 is one of 500 new technologies created in its first year. And with the company’s r&d investment of €1billion a year coupled with a workplace culture driven by innovation, more groundbreaking technologies are said to be on the way – many coming from the UK.