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I just got a new board.

http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,400,836&Prod=ATLYS

As you can see, I have two HDMI inputs and two HDMI outputs on the board.

What I want to do is take one HDMI input and perform some transforms on the 1080p signal. Specifically, I want to make the pixels in the centre of the screen slightly less bright and the pixels at the edge of the screen much brighter. This new signal is then output onto one of the HDMI output ports.

I don't really know how to go about this - I am very new to FPGA design.

Do I need to get some IP, or can I do this myself using standard tools? I have the Xilinx ISE webpack.

Any insight greatly appreciated,

Eamorr
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    "not a real question"? What the heck are you guys on about? I'm asking how to access the HDMI ports and have gotten at least one very useful answer sofar. Voting to re-open. – Eamorr Oct 07 '12 at 22:06

1 Answers1

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There are generally two options for you:
1) You could go ahead and implement your own HDMI receiver/transmitter modules in an HDL of your choice. But for your purpose this seems to be too time consuming and too much overkill, because all you want to do is "change some pixel values".
I also would not recommend this to a beginner in the field of HDL/FPGA.
The HDMI specification is also not available for free as far as I know, so this is probably not the cheapest solution.
2) Use an existing IP core. Have you checked out the "Support Documents" at the bottom of the digilent page(link in your question)? There seems to exist a reference design which " accepts an HDMI input, buffers the input frames into memory, and then outputs the buffer to another HDMI port."
If you have the necessary license to use the EDK(Embedded Development Kit) this reference design should contain exactly what you are looking for.
But even if you want a pure HDL solution, a look at the HDL source files coming with the EDK solution can't hurt.
A full license for the EDK also costs, but you can get a free 30 day evaluation license from Xilinx.

Finally there are a lot of free IP cores available on the internet, e.g. on OpenCores.org.

edit: I just found this Xilinx forum entry Understanding DVI/HDMI and Atlys possibly covering some of the issues you are facing/goind to face.

andrsmllr
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  • really useful information there. Thanks so much. Do you know if the Xilinx ISE Webpack will be enough to do the job? – Eamorr Oct 07 '12 at 18:45
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    the Webpack schould bring all the tools you need, but as mentioned above to use the reference design you will need to get at least an evaluation license for the EDK(create an Xilinx user account if you have none, you can generate the license yourself in your account options then). – andrsmllr Oct 08 '12 at 13:37
  • I think I'll be heading over to the EEE guys to ask them if I can use one of their machines... – Eamorr Oct 08 '12 at 15:17