Sony Digital Handycam - Mighty Midget

Sony Digital Handycam -- Mighty Midget

Sony Digital Handycam

Eighteen months ago, JVC trumped Sony by introducing the first digital camcorder for the consumer market. Sony responded with a portable camcorder that packs the whole range of the latest functions into a one pound package. Sony's DCR-PC7 Handycam is:

Small at 59 x 128 x 116 mm and 1.1 pounds.

Powerful with a 1/3 color CCD (Charge-Coupled Device -- See previous bulletin on Casio QV-10 Liquid Crystal Digital Camera) with 680,000 pixels that provide 500 lines of horizontal resolution (better than NTSC TV broadcast).

User-friendly with 2.5 active matrix color LCD for instant playback and separate viewfinder.

This bulletin describes the technologies that enabled Sony to provide all this functionality in a minimalist form factor. Prismark has identified four enabling technologies in this product:

Chip size packages to provide a maximum in silicon-to-package area ratio. The Sony camcorder is unique in that it uses a total of twenty chip size packages as a means to meet the system's form factor needs. (See Wall-to-Wall Silicon -- Sony DCR-PC7 Camcorder.) The CSPs -- from three different manufacturers -- are based on either flip chip, wirebonding, or TAB bonding but use a common intermediate carrier.

Built-up multilayer substrates to accommodate the high attachment pad density required by a dense assembly of fine pitch packages. Two of the camcorder's three printed circuit boards are liquid dielectric built-up multilayer boards with attachment pad densities of 606 and 352 attachment pads per square inch, respectively.
Flex and rigid-flex substrates to interconnect the various components within the 56 cubic inches of the Sony camcorder. Four rigid-flex assemblies -- manufactured by Nippon Mektron -- support a range of electro-mechanical devices. An additional 16 flexible circuits are made of polyimide or polyester. An excellent example of the use of rigid-flex and flexible circuits for dense, three-dimensional packaging is the lens assembly shown in the following pictures:

Assembled

Disassembled

CSPs on the Sony Camcorder Main Board

A team of clever engineers conceived the extremely complex three-dimensional electro-mechanical assembly and managed to put it all together. This product is a testimony to Sony's extraordinary design talent, which does not stop at the outside of the box, and its remarkable competency in high density assembly. It also shows that Sony is bold and daring enough to implement leading edge technologies in order to defend its role as a leader in the high-end consumer electronics market.

Warranty Disclaimer -- All information used in the preparation of this report was obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time the information was collected. Prismark Partners LLC, its employees, its agents, and assignees have exercised their best efforts in preparing this report. Prismark Partners LLC extends no warranties with respect to this information and shall bear no liability whatsoever to the report recipient or to any other party as a result of the use of this report or the information contained herein.