NeTV alternative for HDMI overlay

Question

I'm looking for the easiest/lowest cost solution to do a simple on-screen-display on an HDMI signal. Basically I just want to add a volume bar/simple text to an HDMI stream, possibly containing HDCP content, then send out to the TV. I don't need to decode or process the incoming video at all, I just want to slap a simple bar and some text onto whatever signal is being passed in. Much like a stereo receiver with HDMI passthrough that adds a volume display when you change the volume.

It looks like the Chumby NeTV would do what I want, but it seems unavailable, so I'm wondering if I'm missing a newer alternative. I've seen some references to the spartan-6 also being abel to do this, but I much prefer the $150 price point of the NeTV to the $400 spartan-6 I was hoping that since I don't require the ability to decode the incoming hdmi video that there might be other alternatives that I wasn't able to find online.

In short, does anyone know where the NeTV is available? Are there any alternatives for what I want to do available for a similar price?

Thanks for any help!!

michaelkellett · Accepted Answer

Hello Phil,

I don't think you quite 'get' FPGAs:

Spartan 6 is a whole family of FPGAs made by Xilinx. You might find a board with 2 HDMI inputs, one HDMI output and an FPGA in between but then you would need to write the 'code' for it do the signal processing - this is a seriously non trivial task - depending on the features you wanted I would charge a customer from £20k to write the code.

So you need to find a board which has software already sorted - and you don't care what, if any, FPGA it uses. The NeTV thingy looked a pretty cheap way to get there but there may be reasons it isn't actually available.

The only out of the box solutions are likely to be for professional real time video editing with big price tags.

To answer your question as you asked it:

I found this (by Googling 'fpga dual hdmi board' - it's kind of what you want, in budget but I think you would still need to write the code. (No idea if it's really available.)

Numato Opsis is an Open Source Hardware FPGA Board with 6 Video Inputs and Outputs (Crowdfunding)

I think they should have gone for a bigger more modern FPGA so that you can use the latest Xilinx tools.

Here's another one that I think you actually buy but it only has two HDMI ports.

https://www.scarabhardware.com/shop/

MK