A Single-Chip Solution for the Multimedia Filling Station
WISchip Cypher 7108 Streaming Media Encoder
The consumer electronics market is in the grip of a digital revolution. Not only are familiar products such as televisions, radios, cameras and camcorders going digital, but whole new categories of products are starting to appear, addressing new consumer demands to control their entertainment and take it with them wherever they go. One such product category is the digital multimedia network server, a digital “filling station” consumers can use to acquire, digitize and store video, audio and images and stream them over their home network to a variety of stationary and portable media players.
The filling station answers a critical need users of networked home entertainment systems are experiencing as they discover new capabilities digital media make possible. From streaming the same content to multiple televisions around the home, to pausing live TV during an interruption, to creating personal libraries of favorite TV shows or home videos, the digital filling station gives consumers greater control over their entertainment experience and creates new sources and choices for digital media they can enjoy.
Lacking a clear vision of just what capabilities these new devices require, however, designers have until now relied upon generic DSP-based solutions to meet their changing design requirements, trading flexibility for cost and complexity. But now the market is beginning to mature, giving designers a better understanding of the functions these types of devices must perform, and providing the opportunity for more highly integrated, less costly ASIC-based solutions more tailored to meet designers’ specific needs.
The WISchip Cypher 7108 Streaming Media Encoder is a highly integrated audio/video system-on-chip (SoC) solution offering real-time, full D1 RGB Bayer or CCIR-656/601 digital video and audio encoding, including MPEG-4 ASP and Dolby Digital AC-3 for reduced bandwidth. The Cypher 7108 provides a range of essential video and audio interfaces and encoders, comprehensive image processing capabilities, a full complement of peripheral controllers and digital I/O interfaces, DRM hardware support and a 166-MHz, 32-bit MIPS processor core in a single 484-ball BGA (23 mm x 23 mm) package. In addition to multimedia network servers, the 7108 is ideal for consumer electronics applications such as IP cameras and wireless TV and personal computer applications such as TV tuner capture cards.
The Digital Multimedia Filling Station
The increasing popularity of personal digital content is driving new market requirements for sharing, viewing, listening and distribution of media within the home and on the go. Research company S2 Data Corporation forecasts that the proliferation of personal media will continue to accelerate. In 2010 S2 Data expects over 100 million digital still cameras will be shipped along with almost 180 million portable digital audio players. The fledgling portable media player market will grow to almost 20 million units per year by 2010.This explosion in all-in-one digital multimedia players, especially portable devices such as the Apple iPod Video, Sony PSP, the Samsung YP-T8 and other devices capable of playing back both high-quality audio and video as well as displaying images, is the primary driving force behind the emergence of the digital filling station. With all these devices literally in people’s hands, the question of where people will get their content from has remained largely unresolved. Until now.
Figure 1. The Samsung YP-T8 represents the new breed of all-in-one portable digital multimedia players driving the need for more content.
Consumers can download audio and video from the Internet, of course, and transfer it to their portable device, but what if they want to watch their favorite TV program or video from their camcorder, a video tape or even a DVD? How do they get this content “onto the network” and into their players?
The digital multimedia network server has evolved to fulfill this need. Using them, consumers are able to digitize their own content from a variety of video and audio sources they already own, stream the content to players around the home or transfer the consent to portable multimedia players they can take with them wherever they go.
Design Requirements for Digital Multimedia Network Servers
At its core, the digital multimedia network server can be thought of as a half personal video recorder (PVR) combined with a digital media server, capable of encoding and storing video and audio, but with no “video out” connector. The digital multimedia network server can stream the digital content in real time for use by players on the network (or even on the Internet), transfer it to portable devices for playback somewhere else or store the content for later playback or transfer.The basic design requirements for a digital multimedia network server touch on each of these functional areas, and can range from simple to complex depending on the functional requirements of the camera. Ideally, a single, robust platform capable of supporting a broad range of functionality from which several designs of increasing complexity could be created to address different price points would provide the most cost-effective manufacturing solution.
• Video and Audio Quality – To support the broadest range of content sources and players, a variety of video inputs are needed supporting a range of resolutions up to 720 x 480/240 @ 30/60 frames per second (DVD NTSC) and 720 x 576/288 @ 25/50 frames per second (DVD PAL). Standard digital audio with A/V sync for accurate synchronization of video and audio streams is also needed.
• Encoding and Compression – An essential part of any digital multimedia network server to reduce bandwidth and storage requirements as well as to ensure compatibility with a broad range of viewing devices. MPEG4 is highly configurable and offers tremendous flexibility to tailor the video quality and compression rate for specific applications. MPEG4 can provide DVD image quality at 2 Mbps, half the bandwidth required by MPEG2. Real-time MPEG4 video encoding from full resolution video sources is essential to support real-time streaming with superior image quality. Dolby Digital AC-3 and MPEG audio are also required.
• Network Integration – As an autonomous network node, a digital multimedia network server must provide logical and physical network connectivity. Industry standard 10/100 Ethernet, over a variety of wired and wireless technologies, is the standard. Streaming of video and audio is accomplished using Internet protocols and technologies such as web servers.
• Peripheral and I/O Interfaces – From local mass storage and LAN connectivity to control inputs, display outputs and serial connections to portable players, digital multimedia servers require a variety of peripheral and I/O interfaces to connected them to the outside world. Some of the common interfaces employed are USB for connecting to portable players, Ethernet MAC and PCI for wired and warless networking, ATAPI for mass storage, general purpose I/O (GPIO) for control and display, among others, depending on the particular design.
• Local Intelligence – The onboard CPU provides the digital multimedia network server with the intelligence necessary to make decisions and control device functions such as record scheduling, electronic program guide updates, etc. It must be powerful enough to handle all the tasks assigned to the digital multimedia server, and support an industry standard operating system to reduce software development costs.
• Security – Content access control and digital rights management (DRM) schemes may need to be supported for some content sources.
• Standards and Interoperability – The Digital Living Network Association (DLNA) created an open, standards-based interoperability framework comprising interoperable building blocks for devices and a software infrastructure and provides guidelines so that products from different vendors support a common baseline. DLNA compliance should be implemented to ensure interoperability with other consumer electronics devices on the network.
The WISchip Cypher 7108 Streaming Media Encoder
The WISchip Cypher 7108 is a versatile, highly integrated video and audio streaming media encoder SoC with extensive image processing, encryption, peripheral and I/O interface support, and a powerful, 32-bit MIPS CPU core. The Cypher 7108 provides high-quality, real time MPEG-4/2/1/H.263/MJPEG video and Dolby Digital AC-3 and MPEG audio streaming and capture from a variety of video sources. Figure 1 shows a block diagram of the Cypher 7108 streaming media encoder SoC.
Figure 2. WISchip Cypher 7108 streaming media encoder block diagram.
The video input provides a direct interface for an external 8 or 10-bit CCIR-656/601 or RGB Bayer digital video source up to full D1, and performs video format conversion, RGB Bayer to RGB conversion, color space conversion, de-interlacing, frame scaling and video frame buffering. User-configurable filters include sub-sample, sub-window, and median/low pass/edge enhancement, as well as a flexible downscaling mechanism. The video encoder supports industry standard MPEG encoding, including MPEG4 Advanced Simple Profile (no GMC), MPEG2 MP & ML, MPEG-1, H.263/ H.263+, Motion JPEG, Raw Capture and progressive and interlace coding. The audio encoder supports Dolby Digital (AC-3), MPEG1 and 2, layers I and II and µ-law/A-law (G.711 voice codec).
The Cypher 7108 provides on-chip industry standard 10/100 Ethernet MAC (EMAC). The EMAC interface contains a dedicated DMA controller for communicating with an external 10/100 PHY device, dedicated transmit and receive channels, four internal FIFOs to move data to and from DDR memory and an MDIO interface for PHY programming.
Integrated peripheral and I/O interfaces and 32-bit MIPS CPU simplify design, speed time to market and reduce total system cost. The Cypher 7108 integrates an ATAPI-5 controller, 16/32-bit DDR SDRAM memory controller, USB 2.0 (OTG) controller, PCI version 2.2, CardBus controller, two UARTs, transport stream output (TSO), I2S audio, I2C sensor I/O, 8-pin GPIO, a local bus interface/external memory interface with four chip selects at 16 MB each supporting both Intel and Motorola timings and a host parallel interface (HPI).
The 7108 incorporates a 32-bit MIPS processor core operating at 166 MHz. The core implements the MIPS32™ architecture and contains all MIPS II™ instructions, special multiply-accumulate, conditional move, prefetch, wait, leading zero/one detect instructions and the 32-bit privileged resource architecture.
For security, the Cypher 7108 supports industry standard AES 128-, 192- or 256-bit encryption and decryption in ECB, CBC, CTR, CFB and OFB modes.
WISchip’s robust firmware with a unified API layer provides most of the underlying software (drivers) needed to control hardware functionality, and through its software partners, WISchip supports a complete multi-format digital media server based on the DLNA Interoperability Model, as well as content protection and DRM enforcement as required.
Figure 2 shows a WISchip Cypher 7108-based digital multimedia network server reference design hardware platform, a small form factor, fanless development kit for an audio/video capture, storage and streaming consumer electronics device. The Cypher 7108's many integrated I/O interfaces allow multiple CE devices to connect directly to this platform and access the locally captured content via a wired or wireless IP network. System software that supports UPnP, Rendezvous and HTTP makes it easy to build products with “filling station” support for portable media devices.
Figure 3. A reference design for a network-ready media player filling station for the home.
As with almost any digital product, integration is the key to lower cost, lower power, higher reliability and compact size. The highly integrated WISchip Cypher 7108 provides all the video and audio input, encoding, network integration, peripheral and I/O support, local intelligence, security and standards support designers need to create highly successful and customizable digital multimedia network server designs and bring them to market quickly and cost effectively.
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