Techwell intros advanced LCD controller for automotive infotainment market

SAN JOSE, USA: Techwell Inc., a leading designer of mixed signal video semiconductor solutions for the security surveillance, automotive and consumer electronics markets, today announced that it will introduce and demonstrate the TW8823, an advanced LCD controller for center console and rear seat entertainment applications, in Booth North 520 at the International CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, January 7-10, 2009.

This device is the most recent and highest premium addition to Techwell's extensive line of high-performance TW88xx in-car LCD display processors and surpasses prior models in both video performance and flexibility for automotive infotainment applications.

Techwell's TW8823 features an embedded MCU, LED/CCFL backlight controllers, a four-wire resistive touch screen controller, analog and digital TCON, and a multi-window 16-bit (65K color) bit-map on-screen display (OSD). Embedding these features in the controller reduces the system's overall BOM cost and provides system designers with an extremely flexible design platform.

"Each key feature of the TW8823 has been requested by our automotive customers to meet applications in the booming automotive infotainment industry," said Techwell VP of Sales and Marketing David Nam. "Better OSD to improve the GUI, and an improved MCU to support LIN bus and CAN, is of particular importance. Our new TW8823 LCD controller has all that, and more. It's the highest spec display controller chip we've made to date."

Customers can leverage the TW8823 across multiple platforms to directly display video and graphic content from multiple sources, including TV tuners, DVD players, navigation/GPS receivers, PCs, etc. Techwell plans to demonstrate two versions of the product at CES - the first with an LVDS connection for higher resolution LCDs (up to WXGA) and high-end OSD graphics, and the second with a standard connection panel showcasing TW8823's integrated touch screen controller.

The TW8823 can support a wide variety of both digital and analog LCD panels with resolutions up to WXGA, and also has an integrated single channel LVDS interface to directly drive LVDS-based LCD panels. Embedded image enhancements include:

* Programmable CTI, hue, brightness, saturation, contrast and sharpness.
* Black/white stretch.
* Programmable favorite color enhancement (up to three colors).
* Programmable gamma correction tables.