David Carey, President, Portelligent (www.teardown.com)
TechOnline

The Daewoo P480 DVD player points to the world of razor-thin margins in commodity consumer electronics, where digital integration is approaching its limit and analog content remains a strong contributor to product functionality. The P480 supports a range of optical formats, including DVD, video CD, audio CDs of all stripes, and even karaoke functionality for the closet crooners of the world.

Integration, reduced component counts, and lower costs have correlated with the DVD player's rise to mainstream popularity. Open up the modern DVD player and you will likely find a case filled mostly with air. The system itself has shrunk to the basic optical drive, a single main circuit board, a power board, and a handful of assemblies for interface to the outside world.

The main circuit card in the P480 a 2-layer board supporting the core DVD chipset from Sunplus of Taiwan. The Sunplus SPHE8200A DVD Interface Processor tackles most the digital signal processing and multi-format decoding. An Atmel EEPROM 24C02N provides what is likely the power-up code memory, while an Eon Silicon Devices' EN29F040A 512 KByte chip serves as system flash memory. SDRAM for working memory comes from two AMIC 2MByte parts (#A43L0616AV-7).

But the digital content is of no use without bits to feed it, and analog components form the critical link to get from disc to data. Output of the optical drive pickup is fed to an AVIQ iQ6310A DVD front-end (die made by Sunplus), responsible for taking low-level analog signals from the pickup and converting them to readable data streams.

Amazing accuracy in laser head positioning is needed for the scheme to work. Here a sophisticated feedback loop between pickup, front-end, and digital processor is needed to guide and position the optical sled for proper tracking. The CHMC D5494 Motor Drive chip controls both disc spindle and sled tracking motors to maintain the appropriate disc speed and laser head positioning.

Digital-to-analog conversion for output audio is performed with a Cirrus Logic CS4334 and a TI dual Op Amp serves as the input buffer amplifier for the karaoke microphones. A handful of voltage regulators tackle local power supply needs. Our cost of goods estimate for the P480 suggests meager margins for this DVD player, characteristic of the flood of consumer A/V boxes found at any electronics retailer. The DVD has even become the loss-leader product used to drag in customers for collateral sales in some retail settings. That aside, the technologies that put $50 DVD players in our homes make for an amazing story.

David Carey is President of Portelligent (www.teardown.com). The Austin, Texas company produces teardown reports and related industry research on Wireless, Mobile, and Personal Electronics.