68300

Micael,

I have just completed a design where I utilized Sharp LQ038 TFT LCD which 
is a 6 bit digital RGB TFT.  The interface controller chip is an Epson SED1376.

NTSC type LCD's are really RGB with separate NTSC to RGB converter cards 
attached.  The screens are optimized for display of movies in analog 
format.  NTSC has many bad artifacts the most notorious being limited 
capability for displaying characters, and has many problems with color 
bleed thru from one color to another.

Your display selection in the NTSC format is pretty much limited to those 
used in Aircraft seatback video applications or in SUV video 
applications.  The size selection is really small, 5.6" and 6.4".  Any 
other size is an RGB with custom designed interface circuits. To use these 
displays you have to take your digital data convert it from RGB to NTSC, 
then that gets converted back by the DISPLAY.  What a waste.

Unless you have done an NTSC design before plan on spending 9 to 14 months 
with a couple of people.  It is not a simple matter of a couple digital 
lines.  Stick with RGB, pick out the monitor first then ask those people 
for recommendations on interface chips.  My design required a full set of 
5V to 3.3V interface chips, the EPSON chip, a programmable oscillator, a 5V 
to +12V backlight DC to DC converter, then the LCD does not have a 
backlight inverter so had to add a LINFINITY backlight driver board.

Now here comes the kicker.  How are you going to display the data.  In my 
application I have to do pictures with overlayed text in up to 9 languages 
and have variable sized fonts.  Add 1 programmer and 12 months to figure 
all this out.  How much memory do you have?  Remember the 33x series is not 
a Windows machine with lots of graphics support, you will be doing every 
thing as pixels, one at a time.

Our customer has mounted the LCD with a bezel which covers a small portion 
of the active screen area.  Because the mechanical alignment cannot be 
perfect the screen is offset in X and Y by a random number of pixels from 
unit to unit.  I needed a software solution where the information could be 
moved on the screen to line up with the bezel for proper display on the screen.

If you have not worked with LCD's figure 3-4 people for the better part of 
a year before you have enough working hardware and software to do customer 
demo's.  If you have done these kind of designs, figure 2 people for the 
same period.

Good Luck

Robert E. Yablonski
Hunt Dabney & Associates
1366 Logan Ave
Suite B
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
714-540-2372 X104
yabo@...