Silicon Image Sees Adoption of HDMI 2.0 Rising Gradually

Though the HDMI 2.0 spec was released on the eve of IFA in Berlin (CED Sept 9 p1), many of its features are optional, leading some CE companies to continue with HDMI 1.4 chips, and rely on firmware upgrades to enable some of HDMI 2.0’s features, Vehling said. A firmware upgrade could be used to achieve HDMI 2.0’s 4K/60 fps, up from 24 fps or 30 fps in HDMI 1.4, but new chipsets will be needed to achieve the doubling of frequency bandwidth to 600 MHz in the spec, Vehling said. HDMI 2.0 also shifts to 10- or 12-bit color from 8-bit and sharply increases the bandwidth to 600 MHz/18 Gbps from 340 MHz/10 Gbps. HDMI 1.4 also supports 165 and 150 MHz bandwidths.

Silicon Image’s foundry manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., is producing HDMI 2.0 chips, but the need to make the switch is less pressing than when 1.4 arrived in 2012, offering some 4K support for the first time, such as 4K/30 fps, Vehling said. Silicon Image doesn’t disclose the clock speed of its HDMI 2.0 chips or the manufacturing process used to make it, Vehling said. But Silicon Image’s chips, including MHL, WirelessHD, video and port processors, are made in processes ranging from 40 to 180 nanometers, with the bulk being either 130 or 65 nanometers, Vehling said.

"You could argue you that you don’t have to jump so fast, but I think over time, most 4K TVs will want to support the various modes,” Vehling said. “And most TVs will be upgraded” either through firmware or new chipsets, he said. “I think it’s game-changing as far as a spec goes, but deployment is trickier,” he said. “There are a lot of differences and if in HDMI 2.0 everything was mandatory then you would have to reach quite high and do everything. But the way it has been set up is to leave it up to the manufacturers. HDMI 2.0 is very generic."

Though High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) isn’t mandated for HDMI 2.0, many studios are pushing for HDCP v2.2 for 4K content, Vehling said. But v2.2 still needs to be finalized. Panasonic’s new 65-inch 4K LCD TV with HDMI 2.0 supports older versions of HDCP because it was the quickest way to bring product to market, but the set will accept a firmware update when v2.2 is finalized, said Panasonic Marketing Manager Masaaki Yoneyama. The adoption of v2.2 could be critical as more 4K content becomes available from studios, Netflix, DirecTV and cable operators, industry officials said. DirecTV filed trademark applications for the name 4KN and 4KNET earlier this year, but hasn’t disclosed additional information, a company spokesman said. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has said consumers won’t need more than 15 Mbps to stream 4K video once content is available on its site, which will happen sometime within the next two years.

"Hollywood doesn’t move that fast and it’s a high-value thing for them so I think they are going to wait until there is enough product available” before making a major push behind 4K, Vehling said. “The problem is the distribution is still tricky and the question is how do you distribute high-quality 4K content? Most of the Internet streaming boxes don’t support 4K so you are going to have to have satellite and cable delivery."

Meanwhile, Silicon Image will sample its Sil9679 MHL 3.0 receiver chips in Q4 with a goal of beginning mass production in Q1 2014, Vehling said. The Sil9679 device supports the new MHL 3.0 spec. It enables frame rates up to 30p, supports HDCP v2.2 and 7.1 surround through Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD.

MHL 3.0 will see deployment in higher-end smartphones and tablets in 2014, providing a data link that is “substantially faster” than the 1 Gbps delivered by MHL 2.0 and bringing it “closer to USB-type of speeds,” Vehling said. MHL 3.0-equipped displays also double the amount of charging to 10 watts, allowing attached smartphones to be fully charged within two hours, Vehling said. The MHL 3.0 spec was released in August.

"You will see MHL 3.0 products next year,” at the higher end first, Vehling said. The migration to MHL 2.0 from 1.0 represented a “minor change,” he said. MHL 3.0, on the other hand, “requires a major change because you double the bandwidth and the displays provide more power,” he said.

In third-generation WirelessHD, Silicon Image has landed several design wins, including Epson front projectors, Dell Alienware notebook PCs, Gefen and affiliate DVDO’s Air3 standalone adapters. Those adapters can deliver HD video up to 30 feet at 1080/60p. Silicon Image, which acquired the WirelessHD technology when it bought SiBEAM, expects to see the technology in smartphones “soon,” expanding it from standalone adapters and projectors, said Vehling, declining to be more specific.

Silicon Image was expected to land two WirelessHD design wins for smartphones by Q4 that could generate revenue this year (CED March 8 p1). Silicon Image fields the Sil6400 transmitter that combines a 60 GHz RF transceiver, baseband processor and embedded 12-antenna array. Silicon Image started volume production of the third-generation WirelessHD chip in Q2 2012 and will need a new version for 4K, Vehling said. A fourth-generation chip will likely be needed to increase the number of antennas for 4K and the current 4 Gbps bandwidth, Vehling said. WirelessHD technology supports up to 28 Gbps so “there is lots of headroom, but the question is how to make the most of it given the power and cost required to get there,” Vehling said.

Silicon Image also is continuing to market the Sil9612 and Sil9616 video processors capable of upscaling 4K, targeting AV receivers and Blu-ray players, Vehling said. The chips feature VRS Clearview technology that was designed for video format conversion including scaling SD and HD content to resolutions up to 4K. The chips were built on technology Silicon Image acquired when it bought Anchor Bay, and marked the company’s return to a video processor business it left in 2009 (CED Oct 28/09 p3). “It’s not our main revenue stream,” but there’s “value in it,” Vehling said.

CEATEC Japan Notebook

CEATEC on its opening day Tuesday drew a turnout of 20,211, including 13,603 registered visitors, 1,035 press and 5,573 exhibitor personnel, show organizers said Wednesday. That was down nearly 15 percent from the opening day of the 2012 show, and more than 24 percent lower than the opening day of the 2011 show. Total attendance for the five-day show that closes Saturday won’t be known until next week, but total turnout at the 2012 show was 162,219, a nearly 6 percent decline from the 2011 event. CEATEC typically draws its largest crowds on Friday, the fourth day of the show, but in recent years the event has shrunk in total attendance and exhibit space sold, reflecting years of contraction in the Japanese CE industry. Though organizers haven’t released data on the square footage of the exhibit space they booked for this year, they said 587 companies or organizations are exhibiting in 2,339 booths. That’s fewer companies in more booths compared to 2012’s 624 companies or organizations in 2,288 booths, they said. The exhibitor decline is plainly visible to anyone visiting the massive Makuhari Messe convention center complex. Just a few years ago, Halls 7 and 8 of the Makuhari Messe were packed to capacity with CEATEC exhibits from Japanese semiconductor and component and device suppliers of every stripe. Though a fraction of those exhibitors still remain at this year’s show, they have been shifted to space in Halls 1 and 2. In their place, Halls 7 and 8 are now virtually empty, but for a “Gourmet of Flower Road” food court, an “X-Golf” simulated-golf concession and huge swaths of sparsely populated Toyota and Nissan demo space. Toyota is using the vast space to showcase its “Winglet Personal Mobility Robot,” while Nissan is there to demo its “autonomous drive” smart technology in a Nissan LEAF. -- PG

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Mitsubishi is demonstrating a 65-inch 4K LaserVue LCD TV as a “concept model,” but has no immediate plans for bringing it into the Japanese market, Mitsubishi AV Equipment Leader Jiro Inoue said. The LCD TV uses a hybrid red laser/green and blue backlight and delivers 131 percent of NTSC color gamut, he said. The 50-inch LaserVue that has been sold in Japan since May has 16 Mitsubishi-made red lasers arrayed across the bottom of the set that are aligned with reflectors to focus the light, Inoue said. The 170 LEDs are along the edges of the 50-inch set and are focused using light guides, he said. The 50-inch set also has a built-in Blu-ray recorder and a 10-speaker array mounted across the bottom of the set. Mitsubishi, which also uses the LaserVue brand for similarly featured front projectors, previously used the brand for a 75-inch rear projection set that was dropped when the company exited the TV business in the U.S. in late 2012. -- MS

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Nippon Electric Glass is using CEATEC to showcase ultra-thin glass laminated onto a new resin it calls Lamion, which it says is a “useful material for reducing the weight” of mobile devices. Lamion has “glass-specific characteristics such as abrasion resistance, gas-barrier properties and flame retardancy,” the company said. The five-layer composite of glass and Lamion it’s showcasing as a prototype for a seven-inch tablet is only 0.76 mm thick, including two glass layers each measuring only 0.1 mm thick. In addition to Lamion’s other benefits, its water vapor “permeation” is lower than that which is “measurable,” the company says. -- PG

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Fujitsu is demonstrating technology for connecting TVs with smartphones or tablets “to conveniently deliver timely information,” such as coupons. The technology enables data transfer between TVs and smart devices by using manipulated light to embed “supplementary information” in a TV commercial or on digital signage, Fujitsu says. The smart device captures the video from the TV screen and processes the embedded data for accessing coupons or visiting an online store, it says. It’s a big improvement from the practice of having to manually input keywords into a search engine when one desires more information about a product while watching TV, it says. “Couponing is really big in Japan,” and Fujitsu is hoping to tap into that popularity, said Fujitsu spokesman Rishad Marquardt. But he stressed the showcase was of an “advanced technology demonstration only,” and that Fujitsu has no formal commercial rollout plans for the technology.

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Intel is readying a 4K push into IP-based set-tops with its Broadwell chip that ships in 2014 with plans for integrating H.265 decoding, said Hitoshi Takada, manager of the product marketing division at Intel distributor Vitec. Broadwell, which will be manufactured using a 14-nanometer process, has been designed to cut power consumption 30 percent compared with the 22-nanometer Haswell chips released this year, Intel has said. Intel has said it expects to begin sampling Broadwell late this year and begin volume shipments in 2014. At CEATEC, Intel is using a H.265 software decoder with an Intel Core i5 4250U 1.3 GHz processor to run an HTML5-based browser in 4K, Takada said. The dual-core 4250U, which shipped in Q1, features an integrated graphics processor and could reach 2.6 GHz in turbo boost as it draws 15 watts of power, Takada said. -- MS

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Toshiba, in a move to make its mark in software and services, delivered Regza “TimeOn” as a means of expanding the market for cloud-based TVs by combining program recording with Twitter feeds, said Shu Takagi, a specialist in the products and social interface department. The cloud-based platform offers smart TV users a means for matching their interests with relevant content, while making the experience more interactive. TimeOn uses keyword searches to check metadata tags of recorded content, retrieving only information relevant to the subject, whether it’s foreign affairs or an actor’s birthday. The tag list allows users to open a scene list of a program during playback and jump to specific segments. It also employs a Twitter feed with a channel’s hashtag so viewers can exchange comments and information about a given program. The software was developed using Javascript, Takagi said.