Posted on 08/18/2008 11:17:13 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Toshiba America Consumer Products has announced a new technology to upconvert standard DVDs to high-definition quality, according to the company.
The XDE (eXtended Detail Enhancement) upconfirts from 480i/p to 1080p and also offers several picture enhancement modes that allow for greater detail, more vivid colors and stronger contrast, according to the Fort Wayne, N.J.-based subsidiary of Toshiba.
"Consumers have embraced the DVD format like no other technology and invested in large libraries of their favorite movies. As the market moves towards high definition, XDE lets them experience their existing DVD library and the tens of thousands of DVD titles in a whole new way," said Louis Masses, director of product planning, in a statement. "XDE offers consumers a simple solution to add on to their HDTV purchase. XDE works with existing DVDs to deliver a near HD experience with enhanced detail and richer colors. Toshiba is delivering to consumers what they want " a high quality experience at an affordable price."
The move comes just a few months after Toshiba, along with other manufacturers, threw in the towel with its HD-DVD format against Blu-ray technology, backed by Sony and others.
(Excerpt) Read more at crn.com ...
Different dvd players use various electronic approaches to display their images, some of them more advanced then others. In short there is often a lot more information on a dvd than many players can display...such “extenders help release that info. Such extenders also use line or pixel doublers that use algorythms to “replace” the missing data “between the spaces” as it were to increase picture clarity as well as color. Mpeg 2 video is a compression algorythm use to compress higher data rate video onto dvd and some compression rates are greater than others leading to variations of dvd image quality(such as more pixelation, ect). The image out from a typical dvd player is often either 480i or 480p in progressive scan mode(think rgb plugs or hdmi for 480p).
When you play a letter boxed 480p progressive scan movie from a dvd, modern hd monitors handle the image in a variety of ways. Some display the actual 480p image in the center of the monitor leaving the edges around the image dark. If the dvd is set to 16:9...some tvs will automatically stretch the image to fill the tv properly, some will leave the image as is until one uses a “fill
feature which strectch the letter boxed feature into it normal proportions and fill the screen.(a dvd in 16:9 mode will display a “squashed” image on some sets until the stretch feature is used which puts the dvd image back into its normal proportioned image).
This letter box streching can stretch the “pixels out “causing some wash out on LCD HD sets. The use of a line or pixel doubler can massively improve the image of such dvd’s, especially on high quality recorded dvd’s such as director’s cuts, collectors editions ect. Converting such outputs to 1080p mode can make it quite impossible to tell hd from 1080p converted images without a direct match up...the images are generally better than from just 480p alone at the very least.
There is work going on, not just in pixel doubling or image extrapolation algorythms, but in compression replace ment, the idea being that compression algorythms take out information that wouldn’t be critical to the naked eye when viewed, though when compared with hd would definitely be seen. The idea is to “re-expand” the compressed image to replace the resolution and color losses by applying a reversed algorythm on the out dvd data. It could be done only on images where the compression was done in a predictable fashion so that the replacement data could be predictably worked out in its re-expansion.
I’m not sure what route Toshiba has taken but hopefully they’ll produce an add on gadget or affordable dvd players with this technology. Hopefully, the technology works as advertised.
My take on this is since you can’t upscale without HDMI or digital input on your video monitor (see my post 19), then this is really just another cheap DVD player with it’s own way of upscaling. This means it offers no value to those of us who only have component inputs, and for those that have HDMI, they might as well get a blue-ray player so they can play BOTH kinds of disks.
This really seems to be a product in search of a market. If they had allowed Component output I think it would have been much more successful. I think it will go the way of Digital audio tape, RCA “needle in groove” video disks, and the elcassette.
Of course, there will be those who may use it as a “transition machine”, as well as those that get it to augment their blue ray player, assuming they think the picture is better than “normal” upscaling and they have a significant dvd collection. On the other hand, anyone that particular would certainly be simply moving to BlueRay anyway.
Toshiba does outstanding work with up-scalers. For most people upscaling is all they need. My Reon equipped XA2 puts out a great SD picture and most people can’t tell the difference between really good upscaling and HD. I can, so I’m waiting for BD to come down in price or for an easy HD VOD solution.
I think what they are saying is that for someone with a standard non-HD DVD player, there is an upscale option that allows the playing of HD (1080i) DVDs and enjoying the full effect of the source in HD.
You are correct in that there ain't no way to get HD from a source disk that lacks the information to begin with. Though I don't think that's what the article is about.
It doesn't. It's hogwash. Just like oversharpening an image in an image editor does not produce new detail, this one wont either.
This old sailor will not own anything manufactured or licensed by these people.
This is not really true. If you take your 480i image and then deinterlace and decomb it (or start with a 480p image), then bicubic resample it to your 1920x1080 field, you are only halfway done. It is at this point that you have generated no new information than the original DVD. It is also at this point where a primitive upconverter stops.
Now you run this image through a sharpening high-pass filter, you are now creating higher frequency content than is in the original data. Now take this approach and throw some adaptive filtering on top of that and intelligently discriminate between areas of lots of high frequency content and areas that have less, and adjust accordingly.
Have you ever run a bitmap through a vectorizing tool? It's sorta the same idea, and it's the principle that these new converters are using, and it appears that they've done a great job.
They are basically able to recreate the high frequency content in situ.
check out my post #27 and lemme know what you think.
You are correct that it doesn't extract more data from the existing signal. It merely used digital signal processing techniques to remove most of the artifacts from up scaling.
It's been a long time since what you saw on TV was an exact replica of the input signal. Even before the era of HDTV our televisions used digital filters to improve on the picture.
The first HDTVs didn't do a very good job of up scaling. Standard definition TV signals didn't look all that good on them. They have gotten much, much better over the past few years to the point where unless you get close to the screen it is often difficult to tell the difference between between a true high definition picture and one that has been up scaled. While the true high def picture has more pixels being accurately displayed, our eyes can't see the individual dots at a very great distance, so if the signal processing does a good job of filling in the dots in between the ones it has real data for, our eyes have a lot of difficulty telling the difference.
The larger the ration of screen size to distance, the more important having true high definition becomes. However for those of us watching a 42" display from 10 feet away, it's very hard to tell the difference if the up scaling is done well.
Toshiba is realizing that there is a market for DVD players that do a very good job of up scaling, so they are giving their technique a brand name and advertising it to bring attention to it.
I’m with you!
>>See the updates above...might be some useful info...I have a 1080 i Viewsonic LCD 32 “ display and thinking about things..<<
Do you have digital or HDMI inputs on your LCD? IF not, I believe this player will do you no good. I have component/vga and video inputs only on my projector. It is the brick wall that this upscaling runs up against, at least for me.
I remember when the “flat screens” first started hitting Costco. I was really surprised when I noticed that, although they had really bright colors, I was not impressed at all with the picture clarity. And this is when they cost four or five thousand.
I walk into costco now and realized they have arrived. and for less than $1,000 often.
So Toshiba is competing with giants like Panasonic in signal processing technology ? I wonder what image scaling algorithm they have figured out that Panasonic couldn’t. This is Toshiba trying to return to the game through marketing hype after losing round 1. I am very skeptical about this. But we will see.
Exactly,
I wouldn't buy anything of theirs.
Anybody else find the quality of the HD signal on the various channels airing the Olympics to, well, in a word....suck?
Panasonic is one of the top manufacturers of electronics in the world. However, I've never considered them one of the leaders in signal processing technology. Maybe I've lost track of who does what, but it seems to me that they more often than not use technology developed by others in their products. They definitely do their own development work, but for most things like this they've always seemed like followers or partners of others rather than leaders.
Panasonic was one of the main partners in Blu-Ray, while Toshiba was behind HD-DVD. Toshiba lost that particular battle, but they are still the third largest chip maker in the world.
They are one of the giants.
“Anybody else find the quality of the HD signal on the various channels airing the Olympics to, well, in a word....suck?”
Are you using cable, sattelite, or fios...I only ask because fios thru my 42 inch lcd has looked fantastic when watching all channels carrying the olympics....the recorded stuff maybe looks a little soft at times....but still much better than 4 years ago on my tube hd set(which still had a better hd picture than most lcds as crts still have higher resolution). The live stuff is like looking thru an open window....and the color is great as well!
The NBC channel seems ok, but CNBC, MSNBC, UHD and USA all seem to display an overabundance of macro blocking.
3 of the 4 HD channels were added to the TWC lineup in order to air Olympic coverage and then I 'll lose them.
Maybe it's due to over compression of the video.
All the other HD channels I have are fine.
FYI........ I'm watching on a Samsung 46" LCD LN-T4671F
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