* Handel joins Broadcom board

Nancy Handel has joined the board of directors of silicon giant Broadcom Corp. Handel is the SVP and CFO of Applied Materials, a big supplier of equipment and services to the semiconductor sector.

She becomes one of six “independent” directors on the Broadcom board, which has nine total members.

* Philips chips in set-top plans

Philips has unveiled two new sets of set-top silicon: the STB22x, and a reference design based on the Nexperia PNX1500 media processor.

The STB22x supports standard-definition digital video recording, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, and USB 2.0 features. Philips plans to offer a version with an HD source decoder and support for the H.264 HD and WM9 HD codecs.

Philips is offering the Nexperia-based reference design as a stand-alone solution, or one that can be integrated into TV designs.