Samsung Semiconductor Enters Multimedia Market

Chipset Simplifies Design, Reduces Cost of Emerging Digital Video Applications

SAN JOSE, Calif., July XX, 1994 -- Samsung Semiconductor propelled itself into the highly competitive multimedia market today, announcing it has begun sampling three critical components used in digital video applications. The NTSC Genlock Digitizer, NTSC Decoder and NTSC Encoder reduce the burden of standard video interface details, simplifying the design and reducing the cost of emerging digital video products.

The Samsung KS0116 Genlock Digitizer and the KS0117 NTSC Decoder together provide a complete video capture solution for obtaining industry-standard CCIR 601 video data from a variety of sources, including standard broadcast NTSC signals from tuners, laser disk players and signal generators, as well as more difficult VCR sources. The full-featured Samsung KS0119 NTSC Encoder combines NTSC encoding with conventional RAMDAC functions to provide a single-chip solution for displaying a variety of digital video input formats on NTSC or RGB analog monitors.

"These initial multimedia family products are laying the technological foundation we will build upon to provide more highly integrated and innovative solutions for this exploding market at even lower cost," said George Brecht, Samsung's chipset marketing manager. "Just as Samsung became the world's leading producer of DRAMs, we intend to make a name for ourselves in the emerging multimedia semiconductor market."

According to Dataquest, a market research firm in San Jose, California, shipments of multimedia PCs grew 1833 percent worldwide from the end of 1992 to the start of this year, from 127,000 units to 2.46 million units.

Digital video, one component of multimedia, combines elements of television and personal computers to enable the manipulation of video images, from image enhancement and alteration to adding computer-generated graphics. Once an analog video signal is captured and digitized, it can be stored, manipulated, retrieved and displayed under computer control for a variety of applications, such as video editing workstations, interactive television, video conferencing, retail kiosks, computer-based training and multimedia computers.

Digital Video Building Blocks

The KS0116 Genlock Digitizer is a complete solution for the synchronization and digitization of NTSC video input. The KS0116 integrates an 8-bit analog-to-digital (A/D) converter, analog automatic gain control, clamping, analog phase-locked loop clock generator and digital timing generation on a single chip. By combining analog circuits with digital signal processing, the KS0116 Genlock Digitizer is able to obtain locking characteristics not achievable by ordinary methods.

The KS0116's two selectable video inputs are gain and offset compensated through feedback loops connected to the A/D converter outputs, ensuring that any external gain or offset errors in analog processing are eliminated. The inputs can be set for standard NTSC or non-standard VCR signals, and correctly track line dropouts and VCR head switching. A two-step, 8-bit, auto-zero A/D converter digitizes the analog video input. The KS0116 outputs 27 MHz, 8-bit, digitized composite video baseband signal (CVBS) and all the necessary timing signals for use in further video processing. The programmable sampling frequency controls the number of pixels per line, and is useful in digitizers, frame stores and time base correctors. The KS0116 also aids in extracting vertical interval time code (VITC) information from video signals, and is flexible enough to handle the 24-bit NRZ code found in laser disk players as well as the professional SMPTE VITC standard.

Samsung's companion KS0117 NTSC Decoder accepts the digitized CVBS from the Genlock Digitizer and outputs the processed video in one of three multiplexed CCIR 601 YCbCr formats: the 16-bit 4:2:2 format, the 16-bit 4:1:1 B format or the 12-bit 4:1:1 A format. The decoder achieves superior quality luma-chroma separation, performs luminance processing, color demodulation, chrominance processing and format conversion, and provides the ability to control the image's brightness, contrast, sharpness, hue and saturation. Separate digital comb filters in both luminance and chrominance paths help reduce cross luma-chroma noise. A non-standard video path bypasses the luma comb filter and sets the luminance bandwidth to 2.2 MHz to compensate for signals with large timebase errors, such as those from VCRs, and a pre-filter can be used to increase gain around the color burst.

Samsung's KS0119 combines a digital NTSC encoder and basic RAMDAC functions to create a high-performance, cost-effective NTSC or PC display driver, and can be used with other members of the Samsung digital video chipset in a typical desktop multimedia environment. The KS0119's 32-bit input port supports all popular PC video, graphics, MPEG and JPEG input formats, including true color, high color and color indexed, as well as CCIR 601 4:4:4, 4:2:2, 4:1:1 or 2:1:1. Up to two channels of data can be mixed, and a variety of keying methods, as well as masking, hue control and color lookup tables, enable special effects to be created, including animation, picture-in-picture and video overlay. The internal two-way color space converter handles both RGB-to-NTSC and YCbCr-to-RGB conversions. Digital signal processing filters ensure the preservation of baseband signals for enhanced image quality, and reduce sampling artifacts by eliminating the attendant high-frequency aliasing components. Three 10-bit video-grade digital-to-analog converters output NTSC composite, S-Video or RGB.

All three devices support an 8-bit parallel interface or a three-wire serial bus interface for program control. All devices operate with a single 5-volt power supply and are available in 80-pin plastic quad flat packages (PQFP).

Pricing and Availability

The KS0116 Genlock Digitizer, KS0117 NTSC Decoder and KS0119 NTSC Encoder are all available now in sample quantities. Production quantities are expected to be available in August. In quantities of 1000, the KS0116 Genlock Digitizer cost $xxx, the KS0117 NTSC Decoder costs $yyy and the KS0119 NTSC Encoder costs $zzz.

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