Executive Summary

This white paper provides an overview of the issues and tradeoffs associated with the design of video interface and distribution networks in automotive navigation, entertainment, driver awareness and safety systems. The choice of an in-vehicle video interface in what are collectively referred to as infotainment systems is a fundamental question of architecture that can have a large impact on system cost, size/weight, features, and display quality. This choice is topical now due to the increasing popularity of infotainment with the car buying public. According to Strategy Analytics, decreasing Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) costs and increasing availability of new functions on infotainment systems are the key factors that will drive automotive displays sales to greater than 30M units by 2012. The integration of navigation and entertainment with other information functions, using a display for the user interface, has emerged strongly over the past two years and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Several video interface and networking options, including both analog and digital are examined, with advantages and disadvantages highlighted. It is shown that the digital transmission techniques and interfaces exhibit key advantages over the more traditional analog approaches. It is also shown that despite the expanding development of multimedia networks capable of transporting compressed video, that a digital point to point interface supporting uncompressed video links is preferred, and that one attractive solution is the Gigabit Video InterFace (GVIF).

GVIF was designed by Sony to address the needs of automotive navigation and entertainment system designers to transport uncompressed video information digitally. GVIF makes use of a thin cable consisting of a single shielded twisted pair of conductors, that exhibits high noise immunity and low EMI, and is optimized for small size and low weight. Current implementations of GVIF support display formats ranging from WQVGA through SVGA, and can transmit baseband video over cable lengths up to 20 meters. When paired with High bandwidth Data Content Protection (HDCP), GVIF’s standard functions and features address all of the requirements for sending content protected baseband digital video from a source to a display. As of January 2007, GVIF is currently the only automotive grade uncompressed video interface approved by the DVD-CCA to support HDCP.

GVIF has been designed in over 10 different vehicle series models and has been incorporated in the products of six different suppliers in model year 2007. GVIF devices have been in mass production since 1996 and have also seen application in PC, Point of Sale (POS) terminals, and In-Flight Entertainment systems.