DTV SoCs power DVB-T, DTR apps

Toshiba Electronics Europe (TEE) has launched a single multimedia IC that integrates all necessary functions, peripherals and interfaces for DVB-T STB, DTR and IDTV applications. Dubbed the "Donau-LC", the SoC integrates a powerful graphics engine, audio decoding and processing functionality, demodulation circuitry and all necessary interfaces and controllers into a 256-pin QFP package.

The device comes in two pin-compatible derivatives. One is targeted at single tuner, single-stream standard definition (SD) operation, supporting in particular IDTV, while the other is available with a dual tuner and dual-stream option that supports PIP (picture in picture) output. Output capabilities include analog video (CVBS, S-Video and RGB/YUV) and 4:2:2 video.

The IC brings together the company's TX49 L3 RISC core operating at up to 162MHz and 215MIPS, Media embedded Processor (MeP) modules that free the host processor from compute-intensive DVB and multimedia processing tasks, and a unified memory architecture. An on-board coded orthogonal frequency division mux demodulator (for DVB-T applications) is compliant with the latest specifications (including support for ETSI 300 744 (DVB-T), NORDIG-II, NORDIG-Unified and DTG standards). An integrated audio DAC further reduces external component count, board space and cost. The Donau-LC's video and graphics engine, with four graphics and video planes, is capable of progressive scan conversion, and offers pixel-accurate onscreen display (OSD) at panel resolutions up to 1,080p (Full-HD panels). An on-board audio media module provides dual-stream audio decoding for bilingual decoding or an audio description channel.

The device can work with MPEG, AC-3 and AAC formats, while audio post processing functions include support for Dolby-Prologic, Virtual-Dolby and SRS-True-Surround. Volume, treble, bass, a five-band equalizer and balance functions are all provided on-chip, in addition to Teletext decoding and time shift recording capabilities. On-board interfaces and peripherals include a full-speed USB 2.0 host, an IDE connection for DTR hard disk support, two I?C bus connections, two serial ports, an SD card controller, 8- and 16bit external bus interfaces and 32 parallel ports. Integrated timers include a real time clock with wake-up support, three 24bit up counter timers and a 'capture and compare' timer with support for IR decoding. The device also incorporates a keyboard controller and seven-segment display controller.

Featuring a unified internal memory architecture, the Donau-LC can also support up to 64Mbytes of external NAND or NOR flash and up to 64Mbytes of external SRAM. A built-in DMA controller manages all memory operations through 'memory-to-memory', 'memory-to-I/O interface', and 'I/O interface-to-memory' modes. In addition to STBs, DTRs and IDTVs, the new device can also be designed into MHEG-5 and MHP (Multimedia Home Platform) systems, free-to-air and DVB descrambler applications and DVB common interface designs.

- John Walko
EE Times Europe