Design And Implementation Of Audio And Video System Of Home Media Entertainment Center

Along with the rapid development of digital technique, there emerged a large number of embedded multimedia products in Pervasive Computing Era. Meanwhile, the popularity of the network also stimulate the growth of digital media, digital home industry will enter a period of rapid development. After analyzing the current development of Digital Home and the key technology of this platform, this paper supplies the solution of HMEC (Home Media Entertainment Center) system that Intel IXP420 network processor and Sigma Designs EM8621L media processor is the prevalent hardware development platform and Embedded Linux is the software development platform.The key design of the HMEC product is the audio and video subsystem design technology. Sigma Designs EM8621L processor is connected to Intel IXP420 processor as a PCI target device in this solution. It implements the hardware device drivers which include EM8621L PCI driver, USB (Universal Serial Bus) driver, IrDA driver, Frame Buffer driver and so on in Embedded Linux OS, and then it abstracts the system functions to supply the upper application development with unified interfaces.A layered design is used in software applications, it divides the application layer into middle layer and graphics application layer to enhance the portability. Media browser middle layer is based on UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) protocol and USB protocol, it abstracts software system function and supplies media browser interfaces for upper graphics application layer, as well as media player middle layer abstracts decoding function and supply media play and control interfaces. There is no graphical interface in our Embedded Linux OS, so we transplant Embedded GUI (Graphical User Interface) - Qt/Embedded 3.3.6 to develop graphical interact interface. The whole application is used to browse and playback the media which is stored in LAN DMS'(Digital Media Server) or USB storage, and it supplies the device control of network connection, video output connector, playback and so on.The result of the functional testing has shown that the major functionalities of the audio and video system have successfully applied. Comparing with the same types of products, this paper analyzes the advantages and shortcomings of our HMEC product, and points out the direction for future product optimization.