Network Technologies for Digital Homes

Digital Homes Providing Various Audiovisual Environments
YASUKI Seijiro

Trends in Interface Technologies among Digital Products and Toshiba's Approach
OKUYAMA Takehiko
In recent years, network functionality and a variety of wireless and digital interface technologies have become common on audiovisual (AV) equipment such as television sets, PCs, and mobile devices such as cellular phones. The increase in transmission rates of each interface has made it possible to efficiently reproduce and record high-definition contents by exchanging data with other equipment.
Toshiba has been developing these wireless and digital interface technologies in order to realize a high degree of usability and functionality with high added value. We are aiming to release new AV equipment including television sets with a large liquid crystal display (LCD), PCs, and mobile devices equipped with these technologies in not only high-end but also entry-level models in 2010 for the first time in the industry.

High Interoperability among TV, DVD, and PC Using WirelessHD^TM Technology
MATSUMURA Masafumi / MATSUSHITA Ken / KOKUBO Takashi
With the wide dissemination of network connections among audiovisual (AV) devices as well as cellular phones and PCs in recent years, WirelessHD^TM high-speed wireless transmission technology using the 60 GHz frequency band without license, which has not been used for consumer electronics (CE) products, is expected to meet various requirements in the market.
Toshiba has been contributing to the standardization of the next-generation WirelessHD^TM as a promoter member of the WirelessHD^TM Consortium, and is developing various AV devices including TV sets, DVD players and recorders, and PCs applying this technology. WirelessHD^TM technology makes it possible to transmit high-definition video contents without image compression, and facilitates the cooperative operation of digital CE products by replacing the wired HDMI^TM with a wireless connection.

Interoperation Using TransferJet^TM Near-Field Wireless Communication Technology
KUMAKI Yoshinari / KAJI Koichi / TOMODA Ichiro
TransferJet^TM is a near-field high-speed wireless communication technology that enables both easy connection and high-speed data transfer among various digital devices simply by touching one device to another.
Toshiba has been playing a role as a promoter member of the TransferJet^TM Consortium, and is engaged in the development of new products equipped with TransferJet^TM technology including notebook PCs, cellular phones, and digital TV sets for release in 2010. We are making efforts to achieve faster transfer rates and enhancement of software functions and usability to realize interoperability using this technology in the home, office, mobile and social infrastructure, and automotive environments.

Connectivity Technology for SD Memory Cards Using SD Host Controllers
FUKUDA Tomoyuki / SATO Jun
SD memory cards are widely used in various mobile devices such as cellular phones and digital cameras, and their memory capacity has been increasing to meet the market demand in recent years. The SDXC memory card has been newly developed, exceeding the 32 Gbyte maximum memory capacity of the current SDHC memory card and providing a theoretical maximum capacity of up to 2 Tbytes. Furthermore, larger amounts of storage requiring faster transfer rates have been accelerating the speed of the SD memory card interface.
Toshiba has developed a core technology for next-generation SD host controllers in accordance with the SD Memory Card Specification Ver. 3.00. This technology offers users not only the highest data transfer rate of SDXC memory cards but also enhances compatibility between consumer electronics (CE) products, which is a feature of SD memory cards. Moreover, connectivity between CE products is facilitated by using TranShare_TM, which is a digital content application system for copyright protection technology promoted by us.

Technologies for IP Retransmission of Digital Television Broadcasts in Japan
HATAKEYAMA Tetsuo
Internet Protocol(IP) retransmission of digital television broadcasts via the broadband network is a focus of high expectations for the wide dissemination of digital television broadcasting in Japan. IP retransmission technologies are also expected to realize the platform for new services due to the convergence of broadcasting and communication.
Toshiba has been making efforts to promote the standardization of these technologies, and is developing related products and applications.

Network Functionality of CELL REGZA_TM Next-Generation Digital LCD TV
TOGASHI Yuichi
Toshiba has developed the CELL REGZA 55X1 model, the flagship liquid crystal display (LCD) TV of the REGZA_TM lineups, featuring seamless network interactivity and further enhanced functionality and performance compared with the latest Z series and other TV models, as well as state-of-the-art image quality and recording functions.
CELL REGZA makes it possible to offer users new value, including both enhanced Web browsing functionality outside of the home network environment and Web video playback functions, in addition to DLNA^® functions in the home network and Internet Protocol television (IPTV) functions.

Network Technologies for VARDIA_TM High-Definition Recorder
KAZAWA Hiroshi / KAMIO Hiroyuki / KITAMURA Tetsuya
The recording of high-definition (HD) contents on DVD recorders has become widespread due to the dissemination of digital terrestrial TV broadcasting. With the acceleration of digitization and networking of home appliances including TV sets, demand has been growing in recent years for the manipulation of HD contents freely among such devices connected to the network.
To meet this demand, Toshiba released the VARDIA RD-X9, S1004K, and S304K HD recorders in September 2009. These models are equipped with the following network functions: (1) capturing of HD contents from a REGZA_TM digital HD liquid crystal display (LCD) TV, (2) direct recording of HD contents from a SKYPerfecTV! tuner, (3) delivery of HD contents to DLNA^® equipment, and (4) sending and receiving of HD contents between VARDIA HD recorders.

Home Network Technologies Realizing Easy Interoperability between AV Equipment and Notebook PCs
OHASHI Shikyo / NAKAMURA Seiichi / ARUGA Hideo
With the increasing diffusion of audiovisual (AV) appliances equipped with the ability to access home networks in recent years, enhancement of network functions is required by users. Although the Microsoft^® Windows^® 7 operating system, released in October 2009, provides home network functions, these functions may not be convenient for all users.
Toshiba has been focusing on improving the interoperability of digital appliances, such as PCs, TV sets, and hard disk drive and DVD recorders, via home networks. In cooperation with Microsoft Corporation, we have developed not only an application for our notebook PCs to make home network functions more convenient to operate, but also another application enabling users to transfer online videos to TV sets via their home network.

Network Connectivity Technologies for Mobile Devices
NAGAI Takeshi
With the increasing diffusion of high-performance mobile devices equipped with wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) technology, it is becoming possible to connect mobile devices to home networks. Demand for better connectivity and interoperability among digital TV sets, PCs, and other connected devices is therefore expanding.
Toshiba has been developing network connectivity technologies in accordance with the latest version of the industry-wide Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA^®) Guideline, which features the addition of a mobile device class. We are making efforts to develop innovative technologies to improve device usability, provide seamless digital media renderer (DMR) integration, and support various media formats, with the aim of offering users a stress-free network environment.

Voice Activity Detection Technology with Robust Performance in Noisy Environments
YAMAMOTO Koichi / AKAMINE Masami
Voice activity detection (VAD) technology for preprocessing of speech recognition is used in many applications to judge whether or not input signals are the user's voice. The enhancement of robustness against background noises is required for VAD under noisy circumstances such as inside an automobile.
Toshiba has developed a VAD technology that can reliably detect the user's voice in noisy environments. In our newly proposed method, robustness in noisy circumstances is improved by introducing new features for the feature extraction portion and decision trees (DTs) for the distinction portion. Experiments using noisy speech data confirmed that the new features achieve better performance than the existing features and that the DTs provide advantages in terms of both VAD performance and computational costs.

Head Control Systems Realizing High-Performance Hard Disk Drives
TAKAKURA Shinji / ISHIHARA Yoshiyuki / YASUNAKA Shigen
With hard disk drives (HDDs) now being installed in various types of equipment such as video cameras, car navigation systems, flat TVs, and so on, they have to provide not only large capacity but also high performance and low acoustic noise.
To meet these requirements, Toshiba has developed two new head control systems for HDDs: a short-span seek control system that can shorten data writing and reading times, and a long-span seek control system that can realize low-acoustic-noise HDDs.

TC90541 One-Chip LSI RF Tuner with OFDM Demodulation for One-Segment Broadcasting
SEKINE Tsuyoshi / FUJIMOTO Ryuichi / HIRAKAWA Takuya
One-segment broadcasting, which is known as "One-Seg" in Japan, is a digital terrestrial TV broadcasting service for cellular phones, moving vehicles, and so on that has recently become popular. The receiver large-scale integration (LSI) for this system consists of two chips: one for the radio frequency (RF) tuner part, and the other for the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) demodulator part. Demand has been increasing for reduction of the mounting area, packing of the circuits onto a single chip, and lowering of power consumption.
Toshiba has developed the TC90541 one-chip LSI RF tuner with OFDM demodulation featuring a die size of 3.26 mm x 3.26 mm, using 90 nm complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. A minimum sensitivity of -98.6 dBm has been achieved by a technology for suppressing spurious signals, and the power consumption is only 65 mW in medium-signal receiving mode.