TVonics Solutions Selects XJTAG To Test Digital TV Recorders
The XJTAG development system is being used by engineers at TVonics' design facility in Bridgend, South Wales (UK), to speed up debug and test of ball grid array (BGA) populated printed circuits boards containing a wide range of electronic devices including MPEG source decoder chips, Flash memory, Ethernet controllers, I2C devices, and termination resistors.
TVonics has also integrated XJTAG with the production JIG tester at its' contract manufacturing partner's site (Sony Manufacturing in Pencoed, South Wales) to enable products to be tested and programmed in-line in one single process.
Andy Carr, engineering director at TVonics Solutions, said: "It's essential that we have the right tools in place to enable our engineering teams to be confident of meeting production timescales, particularly as we extend our range to address the emerging strong market demand for High Definition TV reception for Terrestrial, Satellite and Broadband networks across Europe and the UK."
TVonics was founded in late 2004 and reunites a talented and experienced former Sony design team. The company designs and manufactures digital TVs, receivers and recorders for the UK and European markets. TVonics holds a significant share of the UK set top box market selling devices under its own brand, as well as making products for retailers including DSGi, Tesco, Argos and Marks & Spencer.
Mike Jones, hardware manager at TVonics Solutions, said: "The XJTAG Professional system is an extremely cost-effective and flexible boundary scan solution. It is helping us to further shorten our already challenging development cycles, which is so critical in the fast-changing consumer electronics market. We looked at other boundary scan systems but opted for XJTAG due to its price, the easy-to-learn programming language and the extensive library of re-usable scripts for testing non-JTAG devices."
"Having floating licences has also been a major benefit as it means the system is not tied to one computer and can be moved around the lab or to another site as and when required," added Mike Jones. "Technical support has also been first rate which is important to a small design team with relatively limited resources."
"We are using XJTAG right across the product lifecycle," added Mike Jones. "Our designers are using it to get prototype boards up and running more quickly, and our production engineers have built XJTAG into an automated in-line JIG tester, which has greatly improved our production line test times. We are currently using this JIG to test our latest FREEVIEW DVR (digital video recorder) and, as part of the same process, programme a small boot loader into the NOR Flash memory prior to the main software download via the hard disk interface."
SOURCE: XJTAG