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John Glenn's return to space on October 29, 1998, marked another milestone; the nation's first High Definition Television (HDTV) newscast. The October 1998 HDTV broadcast was beamed to cities like Portland, where it was projected on a theatrical-size screen at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. The broadcast used equipment built around chips that IBM Watson's Multimedia Technologies department helped develop.
Digital Television is being deployed worlwide in both High Definition (HDTV) and Standard Definition (SDTV) formats. A key element of this deployment is the digital set top box receiver. First Generation set top boxes had only support for MPEG's video, audio, and tranport decoder. Increaslingly however, set top boxes are being used as a gateway to the internet and as a hub for home networking. Our group has contributed to all aspects of this evolution within IBM's products for the digital TV market.
IBM Research helped create the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards that are having an enormous impact on multimedia technology for PC applications, digital TV broadcasting, and new consumer products such as the Digital Versatile Disk (DVD). Our history of participation and contributions to the standards goes back to the early days of the MPEG committee. Starting in 1993, IBM formed a Digital Video Products Group (DVPG) to develop semiconductor solutions for the emerging MPEG market.
Key to our department's activities is research and
development in support of
a newly developed set top box chips.
Using this chip, developed by
DVPG , and very little additional logic, one
can design a complete set top box solution for the
digital TV market. The Multimedia Technologies department
at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center contributed
to the MPEG video core in this chip, but more important,
the department is playing a key role in prototyping and
developing a software platform and applications that will run on
the set top box chip. We have enabled or developed advanced
applications such as Web browsing, Java™, personal
video recording (PVR), DVD, and impulse shopping on the
set top box chip. This way, the set top box becomes
a central piece of home computing equipment beyond the
normal role of passive entertainment and migrates into
home networking and e-commerce arenas.
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DVPG has developed a family of highly integrated chips ( STB010xx-STB034xx) that incorporate most of the functionality of a digital set top box into a single chip except the front end demodulation/decoding functions. This family of set top box solutions are offered to meet the needs of traditional digital set top box applications and emerging advanced applications like web browsing and e-commerce, which drive the need for more advanced, high-performance, affordable semiconductor solutions. The architecture of an integrated set top box chip is shown in the following diagram:
At the low-end, DVPG have integrated the PowerPC 401™ processor, and in the mid-range and high-end, DVPG have integrated the higher performance PowerPC 405™ processors . Because all the products are based on our PowerPC processors, software compatibility is maintained from the low-end up through the high-end, thereby enabling customers to employ their valuable software across a broad range of products. Highlights of this chip are:
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The development platform is based on an evaluation board
incorporating an IBM set top box chip. This board was
developed by our partners in DVPG. The board can
accept different input interfaces including satellite
(QPSK) and cable (QAM) demodulators. It can also support
different storage devices like Hard Disk, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM
through an IDE interface. Through additional add ons, 1394
and USB can also be supported for home network functions.
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The main goal is to couple a storage device like a hard disk drive (HDD) to the IBM set top box chip through the IDE port. The HDD in the STB can be used to record and playback both TV programs and data, and is a valuable device for time-shifting and data caching. We have developed software to implement the following functions :
1) Entertainment functions
We use the simultaneous recording and playback capability of a HDD to demonstrate functions like "virtual pause" and "instant replay" which are not possible on a tape recording device. "Virtual Pause" allows a user to pause a live TV program and to play it back at a later time without missing any segment of the program. "Instant Replay" allows a user to rewind a live TV program and to play it back in any special mode that he/she prefers like fast forward, slow motion and pause, etc. Our software records MPEG-2 streams onto the HDD and demultiplexes them in real-time during playback.
2) Data caching functions
We use the HDD to implement a ``data on demand" service in which a user can subscribe to a data broadcasting service and download information like news, shopping catalogues, brochures, web pages, and magazines. The scenario that we are working on is to deliver customized data to the user. First the user selects the data categories that he/she is interested in. The STB software will then record the corresponding data items onto the HDD. The data items will be updated as newer versions arrive and the user can browse the data at any time he/she wants.
The system works as follows: After loading a disc on a DVD-ROM drive connected to the set top chip through IDE, the software authenticates the DVD disc and verifies the regional playback information. It processes the UDF file system and starts playing back the DVD movie through the first video title set. Video and audio are decoded by the hardware, while sub-picture (a.k.a. sub-title) is handled by software. Navigation control software can also be added for processing interactive DVD contents.
We have ported a native Web browser as well as a Java enabled web browser to the Set Top Box.
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