HTPC hardware wish list (1 Viewer)

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Anonymous

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After 10year of working for semiconductor companies designing SW for
chips used in every thing from a ReplayTV Box to Sony HDTV's running Linux. I've decided to venture out on my own and design the ultimate HDTV/PVR add in card for HTPC's. It will be build around a SOC designed by my previous employeer for hi-end HDTV consumer applications. I plan on make this as open a platform, (I’ll publish an BDA API or something equivalent). Most of the software that would normally run as a XP device driver, will run on one of the two 200+ MHz MIPS processors in the SOC. The other processors with run some babble fish code translating Windows Directx requests to native API calls. I’m almost ready to finalize my design and start layout. If there is an interest out there I’ll post the current design features I/O’s and such for comment.
 
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Anonymous

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How will this 'thing' work? Will it be like a combined graphics in/out, tv-receiver, hdtv-card?
 

CoolHammer

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  • September 28, 2004
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    If you really wan't to make a difference ...
    Make it DVB-T or DVB-S and analog receiver.

    Sounds like lots of work ... but kind of intresting thing to deal with.

    Good luck and let us know how are you doing. I might want to build one for my self one day ... If you get it to that stage

    CoolHammer
     
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    Anonymous

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    Hi oSci

    The card won't be a GFX card, but it will directly drive any type of display device. It will take as input any GFX signal (DVI, VGA, etc) scale it using a Faroudja LCD controller (gm1601) and blend the input with the output in the ZR301055 SOC. The video out will be processed by a Froudja scan converter (FLI2310) so it can drive 1080P displays. It is a single PCI card but it will occupy 3 PCI slots. It has a total of 4 tuners 2 NTSC and 2 ATSC, All of the Tuners can be active at the same time. The Hardware decoder can decode 2x ATSC and 12x NTSC. Video inputs include VGA,DVI and YpbPr. The inital version targets the US market.
     

    dman_lfc

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  • July 28, 2004
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    dtvsystemsguy,

    Surely a PCI card consuming three PCI slots with all your I/O ports will be very expensive and consume your R&D budget quickly. I would do more research if I were you. HTPC enthusiasts are unlikely to have three PCI slots free or the case design will be too restrictive.

    How about a DVB design with dual receivers (Sat, Cable, Terrestrial or ATSC) and an analogue input interface which will allow for hardware encoding in a single PCI slot. Philips have great chipsets which allow modular receiver connectivity to suit the market you're trying to promote to without re-creating 4x new boards with 4x significantly different drivers.

    DMAN
     
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    Anonymous

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    If I were in the UK I'd be thinking DVB. But I'm in the US, my main target is Media Center 2005 where you all ready have 3 PCI slots occupied by A/V cards. In my case I'm using 4 PCI slots. This board is designed for high-end applications, I'll publish the API and make some boards affordable for any one that wants to do a port to Media Portal.
     

    dman_lfc

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    And the rest of Europe and Taiwan and Australia that have DVB...?
    I don't think you'll sell many - just being honest I think it's best to start smaller first anyway good luck.

    DMAN.
     

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