The Research And Development On Broadcom HDTV Set-Top Box System

Digital Television is the system used to transport, receive, process, record, andcontrol digital TV signals. Set-top boxes receive and transform digital TV signals intothe signals that analog TV sets can display, which can make the users of analog TVsets enjoy the merit of digital TV. So, set-top box is an important product drivingdigital TV industry during current analog TV and digital TV coexistence period.The content of this dissertation is divided into two parts:The first part is to introduce a HDTV STB solution of Broadcom, which is madeup of BCM7115, BCM7040 and BCM7021. The BCM7115 chip is the Broadcom'sASIC chip for STB and it has the functions of system control, audio decoding,MP@ML MPEG video decoding and channel decoding. The BCM7040 can encodethe analog video into the MPEG-2 bit stream. The BCM7021 can decode theMP@HL MPEG video source. The thesis discusses in detail on the system design,realization and debugging of the system.The second part is to introduce the system software of HDTV STB solution ofBroadcom. This STB system uses Linux as its operation system, which is thepresently popular solution of embedded systems. All the research and development ofthe system software must be based on the embedded Linux operation system. Everydevice in the STB has its device driver and it is important to develop device driver onthe embedded Linux operation system. This part discusses in detail on the wholedesign process of character device driver with two actual examples developed by thewriter.