ARM Community: Future of DTV - Fast, Everywhere, Dynamic - ARM Community

The unprecedented pace of change in the Digital TV (DTV) space is set to continue with resolutions increasing as viewing becomes more realistic, this in conjunction with the change in the viewing habits away from set viewing times to viewing whenever and wherever you are, are changing the face of DTVs going forward. This blog looks at some of the key trends in the DTV space over the next few years that will transform the way we use and interact with the largest screen in our homes.

Resolutions: will continue to increase with High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and 4k2k adoption - 1080p broadcast based on HEVC is bringing higher quality video to 4k2k screens - 4k2k is expected to be the main creator of demand for next generation DTV. The resolutions cannot be fully experienced without matching content resolutions, enabling the viewer to fully benefit from the increased screen resolution. 4k2k is expected to show similar resolutions to those obtained with 35mm films - movie studios are already moving towards being able to provide 4k2k content. The first 4k2k content is expected to be delivered via Blu ray, game consoles and personal video camcorder/DSLR. The broadcast version of 2k4k ,8k4k, is still some years away – we expect to see some pilots starting in 2013 with wider broadcast expected in 2025. NHK will have a public technology demonstration showing Olympic content in Tokyo, London & USA. One of the main challenges is reducing the size of the screens to be suitable for the living room – currently the smallest is a 100 inch LCD.



So what impact does this have on the underlying DTV systems, to enable them to support the resolution increases?

There is a requirement for increased enhancements from a CPU/GPU/Video computing performance within the same low power envelope so as to enable even thinner form factors. The increased performance requirement, whilst consuming the minimum amount of energy, is familiar to ARM and we expect to see the pairing of the ARM Cortex^TM-A9 and ARM Mali^TM-400 products to be followed on by the pairing of the ARM Cortex-A15 and ARM Mali-T604 in the next 12 months. Up-scaling is another system driving requirement. It is the process of taking lower resolution content and up scaling it to the higher resolution screens. This is vital in enabling the migration to higher resolution screens - up until now there has been dedicated hardware to perform this task now system costs can lowered by reusing the CPU/GPU performance levels provided by the Cortex-A15 and Mali-T604.

Viewing habits: TV viewing has been changed forever with the wider number of people having mobile devices – it is not about just turning on the TV when you have a particular program to watch. Watching habits are now on demand and it is expected to continue to be a focus for the generations who have grown up with immediate access to content they are interested in. This immediacy of demand has seen the increase of on-demand content through DTV’s bringing it more in line with mobile computing and smartphone viewing models. DTVs are not just about only viewing programs and films any more, they are another portal to interact with social networks and to buy and consume a wider diversity of applications which are being adapted to benefit from the larger screen and more intuitive interactions such as voice and gesture.

Consumers are no longer using DTVs in isolation. The habit of viewing TV but with a companion device such as a tablet or smartphone to enhance the viewing experience is becoming more common. Neilsen’s recent global survey looked at the usage habits round TV viewing and usage of companion devices and found that over 45% tablet owners in the US use their device daily while watching TV to find out more information about the show they are watching or the products advertising during the ad breaks.

Although video quality is still the consumer’s No.1 buying criteria, applications are getting more important. DTV manufacturers are catching onto this and are working to build a wider ecosystem. However in the past the ecosystems between DTV and mobile would have been separate – now they are overlapping and building on top of each other. So by now supporting the same market leading SoCs found in mobile devices is enabling the DTV ecosystem to get an accelerated start. The combination of the Cortex-A9 and Mali-400 found in the majority of Android based tablets and over 20% of Android smartphones can now be found in over 70% of graphics enabled DTVs. These SoCs are opening up the opportunity for a great gaming and browsing experience and is expected to increase by 5-10x performance and in next a few years. DTV’s are continuously evolving to meet the consumer’s increased expectations round one of the key devices in their home.

User Interaction: The content alone is not going to give the next step up in user experience but how the user interacts with the content. Gesture and voice recognition will only create this compelling user experience when it is closely interlinked with the content. User Interfaces have not been the strength of DTV solutions in the past and we have seen marked improvements in the last 18 months with the quality of user interfaces - more smart TVs are now including cameras, gesture sensors, voice activation sensors built in – the leading interaction technologies previously found in stand alone console machines are now being incorporated. Gaming applications will therefore have an inherent advantage in utilising these features where other application areas may take time to catch up. One of the key focuses for ARM is enabling a wider range of application developers to gain benefits from the underlying combination of Cortex-A9 and Mali-400. To help developers to optimize their solutions across the CPU/GPU resources the ARM DS-5^TM toolchain provides a single view across the both the Cortex and Mali processors – enabling quicker debugging, task optimization and resource management.

Secure purchases: Security of data is another key concern for users as the DTV based purchasing options increase. Both ends of the content chain need to be secure from protecting the copyright aspects of the content – a particular concern for content creators to safe guard their assets and also at the consumer end protecting their personal details and purchasing channels. ARM introduced TrustZone® 8 years ago and it has been used across the Cortex family of products. It provides a hardware level of security protection and it has a built in security protection that can be utilised by the SoC providers and OEMS to enable a secured experience round DTVs, without additional dedicated hardware.

These are just some of the changes that are being seen in the DTV space – what other areas do you think are going to change the TV experience?

Kris Hong, Director of Home Segment Marketing, ARM, is based in Cambridge. Kris joined ARM in 2006 and prior worked for LSI Logic as an application engineer of consumer electronics. He has broad knowledge across consumer electronics and driving new technology in 3 to 5 years. He got MS, BS of electrical engineering at Yonsei University.