Stop the backseat driving
30 June 2009
First IC in the world to allow multiple streams of HD video and navigation images over 1394 Automotive.
Increasing attention is being paid to 1394 Automotive, the automotive network protocol for high-speed multimedia applications, for in-vehicle multimedia networking and it is expected to become commonplace in the automotive market. The reasons for this include the gradual shift to digital TV in each country, the increased availability of HD content, as well as the ceasing of analogue output from Blu-ray players from 2013. These factors make 1394 Automotive necessary to satisfy the expected flood of digital transmissions across in-car networks. Anticipating the future requirements of rear-seat entertainment systems, Fujitsu announced the world’s first ‘1394 Automotive’ controller IC that realises HD (1,280 dots x 720 lines) video transmission over the 1394 Automotive in-vehicle multimedia network protocol.
The new IC, the MB88395, can transmit multiple streams simultaneously around the vehicle, such as HD video from Blu-ray DVDs, digital TV, and car navigation images. The MB88395 does this by using a high-speed 800 Mbps physical layer as well as Fujitsu’s proprietary SmartCODEC, which provides high compression and can transmit HD video without perceptible lag. This not only brings the rich HD experience to rear-seat entertainment, but lowers the system cost of in-vehicle multimedia networks by up to 30%, and the number of wire harnesses (cables) by up to 70%, thus reducing vehicle weight and improving fuel efficiency.
This technology is supported by Yuji Kawaguchi, Operating Officer of Honda R&D Co., “Honda R&D welcomes the MB88395, the first IC to provide the 800 Mbps speeds of the 1394 Automotive specification. The importance of high-speed digital transmissions will increase further in the future to handle in-vehicle multimedia as well as to reduce weight. 1394 Automotive is an in-vehicle network that can enrich entertainment and comfort. We plan to promptly evaluate the MB88395.”
Key to the MB88395’s capabilities is its physical layer, a key part of network hardware through which bit arrays are transmitted, which is compliant with the 800 Mbps set out in the 1394 Automotive specification and is double the 400 Mbps of the previous product. This is combined with the latest version of Fujitsu’s SmartCODEC compression codec for video, which has an even higher compression ratio, compressing video to 1/4 of its original size - compared to 1/3 of the previous product. The SmartCODEC, developed by Fujitsu Laboratories and used in the IEEE-1394 standard, a transport protocol for sending BT.601 video streams, can compress and decompress high-resolution video in 2-3 ms without any perceptible time lag or out of sync contents, which can be a problem when watching the same contents on the front and rear-seat monitors.
These features make the MB88395 the first IC in the world to allow multiple streams of HD video and navigation images over 1394 Automotive. For example, an HD video stream (1,280 dots x 720 lines) from a Blu-ray DVD that has been decompressed has a rate of 885 Mbps. With subsequent compression to 1/4 using to the SmartCODEC, the rate becomes 249 Mbps, so two channels can be transmitted in the 800 Mbps bandwidth, which was not possible over 400 Mbps products.
Key Features
1. Reduces system costs for rear-seat entertainment
The MB88395 IC includes the 1394 Automotive physical layer and link layer (the second layer in the OSI Reference Model, in which packets are formed and transport is managed) as well as Digital Transmission Content Protection (DTCP) - an encryption protocol that prevents unauthorised duplication, download or alteration of audio or visual media. These are contained on one chip, while encoding occurs only within the SmartCODEC’s internal line memory, making an external frame buffer unnecessary. This reduces the number of necessary system components and total multimedia network system costs by a maximum of 30%. Also, by being able to simultaneously transmit at high speed several video and audio streams as well as control signals on one network line, not peer-to-peer, it reduces the number of wire-harnesses by a maximum of 70%. This contributes to reducing vehicle weight and thus better fuel efficiency.
2. HD video compression, decompression and transmission with no perceptible time lag
Included in this new IC is Fujitsu’s proprietary SmartCODEC, which can compress video data to 1/4 in size, an improvement compared to the previous product, which compressed data to 1/3 of its original size. The SmartCODEC also enables the compression and decompression of video to take place within 2-3 ms. Such low latency, combined with the doubling of the speed of the physical layer to 800 Mbps, allows transmission of HD video from Blu-ray DVDs and digital TV, around the vehicle without any perceptible time lag, which can be a problem when watching the same contents on the front and rear monitors. With an MPEG CODEC, there would be a perceptible time lag in transmission.
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