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S3: Fundamentals of Video for the 21st Century

Nikhil Balram

Vice President and General Manager
Digital Entertainment Business Unit
Marvell Semiconductor Inc.,
Tel: 408-222-9828
Cell: 408-368-9085
Email: nbalram@marvell.com

Abstract

This tutorial will teach the fundamentals and advances in video as relevant in the 21st Century. The course will start with basic principles of signal processing and human vision and go on to cover basic and advanced video processing functions used in traditional and networked digital flat-panel TVs. Major topics include understanding of sampling lattices and interlace scan, worldwide analog TV standards, overview of MPEG2, H264 and VC-1, introduction to wired and wireless AV networks, deinterlacing, video and graphics scaling, analog and digital noise reduction, color/picture enhancements and controls, and panel interfaces. Real examples and demos will be used to illustrate the main concepts.

Instructor Bio:

Nikhil Balram has over 20 years of experience in the area of digital signal/image/video/display processing and is a well-recognized figure in the display and consumer electronics industries. He has served as an executive at several public companies in these industries including Faroudja, Sage, Genesis Microchip, SONICblue, and National Semiconductor. At Faroudja Laboratories as Vice President of Advanced Technology, he was responsible for conceiving and driving the company strategy to transform Faroudja from a high-end niche video systems provider to a mainstream consumer IC vendor. While at Faroudja, he played a major role in the creation of Video2000, the first comprehensive video benchmark in the PC industry, launched in February 2000. The video-quality test patterns have become a defacto benchmark widely used in the consumer electronics and display industries. After Sage, Inc., merged with Faroudja, he served as Executive Vice President and General Manager of the newly formed Consumer Products group. Under his tenure, the company developed four product families of display and video processors including the FLI2200 and FLI23xx, and achieved design wins in over 80 products from over 20 top CE OEMs in flat-panel LCD and plasma TVs, digital TVs, DVD players, and digital projectors. He conceived and launched the highly successful DCDi® by Faroudja branding strategy, which is used by many leading OEMs. He also conceived and launched the Faroudja certification program and the Faroudja patent licensing program. After Genesis Microchip's merger with Sage Inc., he briefly served as Vice President of Consumer Products, responsible for defining and driving consumer ICs for the joint company. After leaving Genesis, he joined SONICblue as Vice President for Connected Home Products. He was responsible for the P&L for Connected Home products that included the acclaimed ReplayTV product-line. He managed and successfully launched SONICblue's first mass-market Digital Video Recorder, the RTV5000 series. After SONICblue, he joined National Semiconductor as Chief Technology Officer for the Displays Group and most recently served as General Manager of their High-Definition Products division. At National, he provided strategic guidance for the development and launch of the PPDS® architecture for next-generation LCD-TV panels, led the development of the QuietVideo Processing suite of technologies and launched the 25xx family of video format converters that are used by leading CE companies. As of May 1st, 2006, he joined Marvell Semiconductor as Vice President and General Manager of the Digital Entertainment Business Unit in the Communications and Consumer Business Group. Dr. Balram has over 30 technical publications and over a dozen filed or issued U.S. patents and applications and has given invited lectures and keynotes at major conferences around the world. He has a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in electrical engineering, all from Carnegie Mellon University.