Success In Portable Video Starts With A Balanced Design

Sony has exhibited a flexible prototype OLED for portable devices, offering a 2.5- in. diagonal. This display is just 0.3 mm thick, and it can show 16.8 million colors at a resolution of 120 by 160 pixels. It’s based on depositing thin-film transistors (TFTs) directly onto a plastic substrate.

Considering all of the other recent advances in portable video, today’s displays still leave something to be desired. Consumers aren’t likely to enjoy watching feature-length movies or TV shows on such tiny screens for lengthy periods of time. Instead, today’s consumers want to share their media with friends and family via large-screen displays (e.g., TV). In addition to a more pleasant viewing experience, this transfer also reduces the portable device’s power consumption.

The best transfer method is through a high-definition media interface (HDMI) connection. But HDMI transmitters tend to be power-hungry, making them difficult to use in battery-powered applications.

Bucking that trend is a low-power HDMI transmitter from Analog Devices dubbed the ADV7520NK. According to ADI, the device’s active power dissipation is more than half as much as other devices on the market, and its 18-µW standby power consumption is less than 25% of competitive devices.

Finally, video technology for portable media devices is very dynamic, so it’s tough to accurately assess where things will stand in even a year or two. Consider this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show, held in January in Las Vegas, where LG Electronics showed off its Mobile Pedestrian Handhelds (MPHs) while Samsung unveiled its Advanced VSB devices.

These products are prototypes of portable video products that may come out within a year. They’re designed to receive U.S. TV broadcasts. Yet each employs a different decoding method to modify the broadcast signal for reception by mobile phones and other portable media devices.