Over the last two decades, India has built up its embedded engineering expertise to become the “design house of the world” for high tech products. These products range from integrated circuits (ICs) to complete product designs across the domains such as automotive, telecommunication, medical devices and consumer electronics. The Indian design ecosystem brings together a complementary fusion of small niche companies targeted at sub-segments of larger products to global corporations involved in product design activities for products being launched across the world. The engineering talent and skills have enabled both ends of the spectrum to set up efficient teams to develop their products quickly.
OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGESThe consumer electronics domain today, perhaps the largest market for embedded products, has always faced the threat of obsolescence as the pace of the technology constricts the market window more than ever before. It is the need to utilize this quick adoption of technology for new product development as well as quick derivatives, that we see Indian firms being sought after for consumer electronics as well. Today, design houses and development centers from India are developing various CE products, including digital TVs and set top boxes for markets worldwide.
The design complexity of these products has been increasing significantly from being simple digital-to-analog conversion functionality to high-end hybrid devices capable of various functionalities. For example, today’s high end products can receive terrestrial, cable, satellite and IP broadcast combinations in a single device. In addition these devices even have media player and home networking functionalities.
For the next step, we have already seen web browsers and various Internet-enabled applications and services being incorporated into TVs. In another dimension TVs, are also taking different form factors, including portable/mobile TV and in-car TVs.
Wipro has been developing set top boxes (STBs) and digital TVs for more than seven years for various brands and OEMs worldwide. During this period the company has evolved from working on peripheral activities of product development to providing complete product solution. Continuous investment in creating various intellectual properties has enabled Wipro to help clients with rapid product development. These products have been deployed in various geographies; each having different digital TV standards.
IDTV REFERENCE DESIGNDuring the past 12 months, the engineering team at Wipro has developed complete a iDTV reference design software. Based on Wipro’s Global DVB-T solution, this reference design was for a semiconductor company targeting the European market. The solutions built upon the basic DVB terrestrial specifications from the DVB committee by adding two more levels of specifications to be implemented as part of the solution. These additions helped the semiconductor firm to ensure it is compliant to all the standards required for the target geography. The additional levels focused on region specific (D-Book, E-book, Nordig, DGTVi, etc.) capabilities and to also provide specific digital TV requirement for each country.
The design of the solution, with the Application Development Kit, enabled quick realization of product. In this design, the ADK implements the complete business/application logic required to realize iDTV solution on the standard based middleware. This has enabled customers to quickly change the skin/UIs and customize the design to different customers. The key features of this solution were auto/manual search, channel management, multi-language support, parental control, configurable favorite list, EPG, teletext, subtitle and all standards audio/video setting features.
IN-CAR DTV FOR JAPANESE MARKETWipro also developed an in-car TV solution as part of the automotive infotainment system for an automotive OEM. The OEM was looking for a best-in-class “in-car digital TV solution” targeted for the Japanese market. Wipro provided the complete software solution for this product. This solution was designed to be compliant to the ARIB ISDB-T 12 and 1 segment, including ISDB-TSB specifications. Wipro’s engineering teams also ensured flawless implementation of key features supported in the solution such as audio/video application software with channel search/selection, with output resolution of 800x480 for in-car infotainment display, EPG, Closed caption, etc. The design also included a diagnostics mode with pre-defined set of functionalities. Some key highlights of the solution include four-way antenna diversity. The solution interacts with the head end unit through MOST. In addition, for the Linux-based solution, Wipro integrated a third party BML browser to enable data services functionality in the solution.
THE WAY FORWARDDigitization of TV as a phenomenon has been around for almost a decade now and has opened up unlimited opportunities to all the players in the industry addressing this market. The move towards digitization has offered opportunity of developing millions of digital TV/STBs. Companies across the world have embraced this opportunity, including many companies from India. Wipro was one of the first to realize this opportunity and moved forward focused on solutions-based offerings based on different DTV standards for addressing all the major geographies across the world.
Author InformationGireesh Kumar N. is a Product Manager – Digital TV, at Wipro Technologies. He can be reached at gireesh.kumar@wipro.com.
