Broadcom has partnered with Adobe to embed Adobe Flash Lite 3 into several of their latest System-on-a-chip (SoC) platforms for TVs and STBs. This will allow vendors who use Broadcom’s chips to easily add Flash support to their products. Along with announcing the chips, 2Wire announced that their recently launched MediaPoint digital media player is one of the first products to use the BCM7405 – one of the Flash-enabled chips. The 2Wire MediaPoint is the first STB that supports Blockbuster’s broadband VOD service.

The first four SoCs to be Flash-enabled are the BCM3549, BCM3556, BCM7400 and BCM7405. I find this intriguing as the BCM7405 looks like a newer generation of the BCM7401 which is the main chip in the TiVo HD. It has basically the same features – plus more: Flash support, DivX support, faster CPU core (400Mhz vs. 300MHz), etc. Makes me wonder if maybe this could be used in TiVo’s rumored ‘Series4′ model. But that’s just idle speculation.

With the announcements from LG, Samsung, Roku, and now this, I think one of the major trends this year is getting Internet/broadband content onto the TV screen.

The press releases:
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I’ve said it myself several times, I expect to see Blu-ray players with sub-$200 MSRPs on shelves in time for the holidays. We’ve already had sub-$300 MSRP players announced, due by mid-year. As more and more players hit shelves, especially more low-end players, the lower bound on the price will come down. I don’t know if we’ll see any sub-$100 sale prices this year, like we did on HD DVD last year, but I wouldn’t be too surprised. But I fully expect sub-$200 MSRP pricing on some low-end decks, and that we’ll see sub-$100 prices in 2009.

And I’m not alone, the Blu-ray Stats New Log had a post last week about chip makers Zoran and Mediatek planning to join Broadcom and Sigma Designs in offering chipsets for Blu-ray players. More vendors offering chipsets will help drive down component prices, leading to lower player prices. As the post states:

Ken Lowe, vice president of strategic marketing at Sigma Designs, said it’s widely expected that new Blu-ray players from China and Taiwan will be in stores at prices near $200 in time for Christmas.

And today trade-mag Dealerscope picked up on the story too.