Date: 29/09/2009

Two new SoC devices for LCD digital TV sets from Renesas

Renesas has announced the release of its two new SoC devices for use in LCD digital TVs for the North American market. These SoCs handle the main signal processing tasks from demodulation of digital broadcast signals to signal output to the LCD panel. The R8J66977BG supports Full HD and the R8J66975BG supports WXGA, providing coverage of LCD panels ranging from low to high resolution.

The R8J66977BG and R8J66975BG are pin-compatible, adds standby power consumption and on-chip peripheral functions such as a JPEG viewer supporting display of data in JPEG format, such as photos.

Renesas says, both the devices support ATSC signal processing for digital broadcasts and NTSC signal processing for analog broadcasts, which are the video formats used in North America. In addition, they can process input signals from PCs up to UXGA resolution and support the component, composite, and S-video interface formats used worldwide. They produce 10-bit low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) as the output to the LCD panel. Both products also incorporate functions for enhanced picture quality. They have on-chip functions to ensure that the TV set delivers a high-quality picture, including a 3-D noise reduction circuit (which prevents flicker by detecting and suppressing noise elements in the analog video signal), 3-D de-interlacing, 3-D Y/C separator circuit (which separates the luma and chroma signals), and NCM for color management. Built-in audio processing functions include BTSC, the multiplexing system used in North America, six-channel analog audio input, and one-channel analog audio output. A one-channel DDR2-SDRAM interface supporting a bus width of 16 bits and transfer speed of 800 megabits per second (Mbps) is implemented on-chip to allow connection of an external DRAM device.

The package is a 376-pin PBGA that measures 23 mm × 23 mm, which is in the smallest class in the industry for a digital TV signal processing SoC.

Availability: Sample shipments will begin in October 2009 in Japan.

For more details visit sg.renesas.com