A full-duplex hands-free videophone add-on device for digital television sets

This paper presents a prototype of full-duplex hands-free videophone add-on device for digital television sets. It consists of a digital camera and microphone array which are connected to the TV set through the High-Definition Multimedia Interface. The system is extendable with a 3G modem to become capable of working in a stand-alone mode as a video phone for 3G network. The add-on provides: hands-free video communication, excellent sound quality via TV loudspeakers and simultaneous watch of the TV broadcast. While the communication with remote user is active, the existing sound from the TV broadcast is efficiently suppressed with the embedded audio processing engine. This is possible with microphone array usage and sophisticated voice processing algorithms in the background. This add-on aims to extend functionality of TV sets and improve user experience.