Mitsubishi Electric Intros In Car Blu-Ray Disc Player

Mitsubishi Electric Corp. has developed a 1DIN automotive Blu-ray Disc (BD) player that has only 1/3 the volume of the company’s home BD
player.  
 
It aims to commercialize the player in fiscal 2009. A prototype of the product measures 50 x 178 x 180mm and supports BD-ROM, BD-R and BD-RE.  
 
There are two main factors that contributed to the small size. First, Mitsubishi Electric increased the board density by 1.5 times. Second, the company reduced the thickness of mechanical parts while improving the anti-vibration performance of the equipment.  
 
Specifically, the level of disc run-out was reduced to one fifth that of the company’s existing products. By reviewing the mechanical design with the use of a vibration analysis technology, the company made the improvements without adding a damper.  
 
The new BD player is expected to be used in combination with Mitsubishi Electric’s car navigation systems. However, the player uses Linux as its operating system (OS), while the car navigation systems employ Windows CE. "Home BD players normally use Linux, so we developed the player based on it," the company said.  
 
Mitsubishi Electric has also eluded to a technology to receive digital terrestrial TV broadcasts when the vehicle is running at a high speed. Although it depends on the  signal reception environment, digital terrestrial TV broadcasts can be received with four antennas when the car is running at 200km/h, the company said.  This was enabled by a function to automatically switch filters, etc that correct signal distortion in accordance with the vehicle speed. The speed is estimated from the variation in the reference signals included in the broadcast signals.