RMI Corporation has announced a complete product solution for Home Media Players (HMP), extending new features and capabilities to the digital photo frame market. RMI’s turnkey HMP application solution drives advanced product capabilities such as video streaming, wireless connectivity, increased on-demand content, home connectivity, and enhancing the overall consumer experience.

RMI’s Alchemy-based Home Media Player solution offers original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) a faster time to market, lower system cost, and the configurability and performance required to develop Home Media Players with advanced features. The RMI solution leverages the RMI Alchemy Au1200 series of connected media processors, giving OEMs and original design manufacturers (ODMs) the flexibility and the tools necessary to develop and deliver a connected HMP system for consumer usage and overall home connectivity.

The evolution of the traditional digital photo frame into the home media player has already begun with the addition of Wi-Fi connectivity to the DPF category. The RMI Alchemy HMP design integrates Atheros’ Radio-on-Chip for Mobile (ROC) AR6002 for WLAN. This single-chip solution delivers high throughput and low power consumption for embedded Wi-Fi applications.

With the combination of internet connectivity and RMI Alchemy media processors, the following features are now possible:

• Streaming IP radio, DVD-quality video, and IPTV from Web sites like YouTube, Hulu, and Joost  
• VoIP and video chat calls  
• Gadget and widget services for on-demand content such as weather, sports, news, traffic, and finance  
• Interface to social networking sites (Web 2.0)  
• Online photo and video sharing from popular content sharing sites  
• Email/Instant messaging/SMS/MMS/RSS reader  
• TV reception  
• Pier-to-pier (frame-to-frame) content sharing and communication  
• Complete HMP Application Solution

RMI’s Home Media Player Reference Design Kit is a customizable solution including a reference design board, software board support package (BSP), hardware schematics, documentation, and advanced HMP applications. The HMP Reference Design Board is based on the RMI Alchemy Au1250 Processor. This high performance processor, running at 700MHz, provides the needed horsepower to handle the most challenging HMP applications. The reference design includes all essential hardware functionality including media card interfaces for SD/MMC/MS/xD/CF and a USB flash stick. Additionally, the design also comprehends an audio codec for stereo speakers, a touch screen interface, and Wi-Fi connectivity provided by Atheros’ AR6002 ROCm WLAN chip. Flash memory and DDR2 RAM are plentiful for both the user (media storage) and the application space.

The HMP Reference Design Kit includes a complete board support package (BSP). The BSP includes the kernel, file system, and tool chain, along with driver support for all peripherals. In addition, the BSP includes a complete media stack for high quality D1 resolution video playback of the internet’s most popular audio and video formats including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV, DivX, and Xvid. RMI has also established a broad ecosystem of partnerships to enable OEMs to quickly take their HMP vision to market. This ecosystem includes ODMs as well as Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) with a range of capabilities and solutions for the HMP and related consumer media markets.