Liquid Crystal Devices (LCD) are widely used for display systems. We have applied an LCD to an optical head. The wave front aberration caused by disc tilt is reduced by controlling the supplied voltage to change the refractive index of an LCD. As a result, the optical disk tilt margin is expanded. We have also applied this technique to attain CD/DVD compatibility.
A phase change drive with both-sided head have been developed for use in a video server for small-scale near-video-on-demand systems. To increase the data-transfer rate, we developed dualaccess heads that enable us to read and write the data on both sides of a disk alternately. The drive shows no critical mechanical interference between the two heads and achieves 1.8 times higher transfer rate than that of a single head. A prototype video server system built using this drive is capable of distributing MPEG1 compressed images to 8 terminals simultaneously.
A DVD video recorder is proposed that frees viewers from restrictions on when a program can be viewed by allowing a program to be played while the recorder continues to record other programs. This recorder also makes recording, viewing, searching and managing programs much easier than with a conventional VCR. The recorder consists of two MPEG1+ video encoders, one MPEG2 decoder, a DVD drive with a disk changer, and a hard-disk-drive.
Thermal dye transfer printing system for still picture has been developed. The newly designed two ASICs and its specified software, which serves as a dominant role in the system design, minimized hardware items to be designed. As a result, the small enough still picture printing system system with unique features has performed to expand the opportanity of multi media. Plural interface capabilities are installed into the system in terms of computer friendly application in both an image capturing and its processing.