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 ...
fyi
So how does this work? If the DVD doesn’t contain sufficient information for a 1080p picture to begin with, how can you give it that information?
Forget HD DVD: Toshiba focuses on plain old DVD
The word is upscaling
Not sure what all is done via electronics....
What Is Meant By An HD-compatible DVD player?
************************EXCERPT************************
The Upscaling Process
Upscaling is a process that mathematically matches the pixel count of the output of the DVD signal to the physical pixel count on an HDTV, which is typically 1280x720 (720p) or 1920x1080 (1080i).
720p represents 1,280 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 720 pixels down the screen vertically. This arrangement yields 720 horizontal lines on the screen, which are, in turn, displayed progressively, or each line displayed following another.
1080i represents 1,920 pixels displayed across a screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down a screen vertically. This arrangement yields 1,080 horizontal lines, which are, in turn, displayed alternately. In other words, all the odd lines are displayed, followed by all the even lines.
The Practical Effect Of DVD Upscaling
Visually, there is very little difference to the eye of the average consumer between 720p and 1080i. However, 720p can deliver a slightly smoother-looking image, due to the fact that lines and pixels are displayed in a consecutive pattern, rather than in an alternate pattern.
The upscaling process does a good job of matching the upscaled pixel output of a DVD player to the native pixel display resolution of an HDTV capable television, resulting in better detail and color consistency.
However, upscaling, as it is currently implemented, cannot convert standard DVD images into true high-definition images. In fact, although upscaling works well with fixed pixel displays, such as Plasma and LCD televisions, results are not always consistent on CRT-based high definition televisions.
Good point.
It doesn’t give the DVD any new information, but if it works like the upscaling chip in Toshiba’s HD-A30 HD-DVD player, these will make DVDs look spectacular on a big HDTV.
There is not enough information to enlarge a picture
They may have a nice way to SIMULATE a higher resolution but you cannot extract anything more than what is there.
I'm really impressed with its upscaling ability for regular DVDs.
I'm not sure if it has this new XDE?
BUMP!
My PS3 and my Denon 3808ci already do it for me...
Anyone know about this?
Interpolation algorithms.
IE the format has 1/2 as many lines as the display, you can interpolate the pixes on the 2 lines there, and fill the line in between with a pixel color matching the 2 if they are the same, or between the 2 if they are different etc.
Incredibly dumbed down, but this stuff has been available for years, if you bought a large projection TV long before HD formats existed, you could get a line doubler to increase crispness that worked on the same principles.
I’m sure they are using far more complex algorithms than I’ve described, but the general principle is the same.
Actually this works very well. An A/B comparison will make you a believer. It aint blue-ray, but is is significantly better than the 480p picture.
Sure wish I had gotten a projector with an HDMI cable. If these don’t have that limitation I’ll be purchasing one very soon.
For a plasma/lcd/dlp TV with a native resolution of 1080P, the upscaling from 480i to 1080P has to be done somewhere in order for the picture to be displayed. The TV either has to upconvert from the 480i or 480P signal(regular dvd) to 1080P, or the DVD player can do it. Generally speaking, a good progressive scan DVD player delivered a better 480P picture compared to letting the TV do the 480i-to-480P conversion (this back when progressive scan for regular DVDs was cutting edge technology). Basically the idea is that you can have more advanced processing in a dedicated upscaling player than would be available in most TVs, where upscaling is just one of thousand different processes that the maker has to cram into the TV.
The company OPPO has made a lot of money building dedicated upscaling DVD players, and Toshiba is hoping the booming 1080P market for LCD & plasmas will provide a niche for their DVD players.
It ain't perfect, and it ain't real HD, but a proper upscaler can do a very credible job in upconverting SD DVDs to HD.
How does it work? Images are created using tiny areas called Pixels (Picture Elements.) If one pixel is white, and the next pixel to the right is black, you can make an educated guess that if there were a pixel between the two, it would be gray.
Add in pixels above and below the target pixel, as well as the pixels near the target that occured earlier and later in time, and you can get a pretty good estimation of what that pixel shold have been had the source been of a higher reslolution.
The more computational power the upconverter has, the more sophisticated the pixel estimation can be.
As you undoubtedly know, 1920 X 1080 (square pixel) is full raster 1080 (i or p), but there are a couple of thin raster sizes as well.
There is 1280 X 1080 and 1440 X 1080, both of which use rectangular (anamorphic) pixels that are converted to 1920 lines of square pixels when displayed. While stored on disc or tape, the thin raster frame sizes allow the format to use less total pixels, reducing storage size and bandwidth requirements.
FWIW.
According to this article: http://newsblaze.com/story/2008081801030400006.pnw/topstory.html
“To display upconverted 720p, 1080i or 1080p video content, a 720p, 1080i or 1080p capable HDTV or HD Monitor (as applicable) with an HDCP capable HDMI or DVI input is required.”
This makes the product just another upconverting DVD player with its own “flavor” of upconverting.
Irrelevant product.
This is really pointless for MOST people now. If someone has a thousand regular DVDs in their collection, then maybe it is worth getting.
But the studios et al are going to push Blu Ray and when you have an HD TV, you’ll just get a Blu Ray player. If you only own a few DVDs and mostly rent, there is no reason to buy this piece of equipment...you get a Blu Ray.
It reminds me of the little DVD players that had a cassette attachment to use in your car because you didn’t have a CD player.
It is a neat gadget for about 3 years, then it will be pointless.
Again, unless you just have a MASSIVE DVD collection and don’t want to rebuy. But how many people is that? Not many relatively speaking.
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
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.