Broadcom Corporation that claims to be the leading provider of silicon solutions enabling broadband communications has extended its supply agreement with cable set-top market leader, Motorola Broadband Communications Sector.

As per the alliance Broadcom will be a primary supplier of chips for Motorola's standard definition and high definition video set-tops through next year. An official release informs that the relationship will continue to drive next generation video services for consumers on cable networks such as High Definition (HD) video programming and Personal Video Recording (PVR), which are incorporated in Motorola's recently introduced DCT6000 product family.

Motorola has shipped more than 26 million digital set-tops and over 2,000 digital headends serving more than 75 million homes. Motorola's diverse digital set-top portfolio has enabled 350 broadband operators worldwide to deliver a range of interactive information and entertainment services to customers' homes in over 1,000 cable systems. These services include video-on-demand, interactive television, and HDTV.

Motorola states that as the leading global provider of set-top terminals it remains committed to bringing to customers the broad range of products necessary for their success. The company's special focus rests on the most advanced set-top features included in HDTV and PVR units. Working with Broadcom as its next generation silicon architecture vendor assures the company of the availability of a broad range of advanced set-top chips to succeed in this important market.

Broadcom has stated that this relationship would expand the set-top marketplace by providing the best products and services to the industry and, in turn, drive enhanced video experiences for users as well as additional revenue streams for cable operators.

Broadcom claims to have the industry's broadest chip offering for set-top boxes. These highly integrated chips provide a broad range of features and capabilities for building standard digital cable-TV boxes for digital video broadcasting, as well as high-end interactive set-top boxes that merge high-speed cable modem functionality with studio-quality graphics, text and video for both standard definition television, or SDTV, and HDTV formats.

In addition, Broadcom's set-top box silicon incorporates PVR functionality that allows viewers to watch and record multiple programmes and enables additional features such as selective viewing, fast forward, fast reverse, skip forward, skip back and slow motion and frame-by-frame viewing.