Fujitsu MB88395 chip supports 1394 Automotive communication standard

It goes without saying that we love to be entertained, otherwise how else would you explain sold out rock concerts, millions of Thriller albums making their way to living rooms all over the world and the clamor for the latest hit movies. In fact, with the advent of the iPod, entertainment has gotten all the more portable, spawning a mushrooming portable media player industry that has players from various companies coming up with their own creations. While these devices can be carried around in one’s pocket, what about entertainment options in the vehicle itself? Right now, we’re just stuck with built-in DVD players as well as in-dash displays (or those attached to the sun visor) to keep the kids entertained with Barney’s DVD during that cross country road trip, but what if entertainment could be personalized in high definition for each passenger? That’s what Fujitsu Microelectronics Ltd. aims to do with their new MB88395 processor, an LSI which supports the “1394 Automotive” communication standard for automotive information systems.

Basically, the MB88395 will offer a capability to simultaneously transmit video data from Blu-ray discs, terrestrial digital TV broadcasts and car navigation systems. This is made possible thanks to doubling the transmission speed of its previous product to 800Mbps, making transmission of 720p HDTV video a very real possibility, in addition to throwing in a function to compress HDTV video data to 1/4 and uncompress it. Its predecessor was unable to scale such heights, hitting data compression of just 1/3 at best.

We would assume that this new technology would be able to reroute video from various sources to individual screens in the car, making sure each passenger will be able to watch a video of his/her choice without having to quarrel over whose show must come first. Sample shipments have already started, and we hope to see a working consumer solution in the near future.