User guide

6
1 About Crystalio
From SD to HD
Engineers at Faroudja realized that to find an entry
point for the new HD programming into a
broadcasting industry where HD programmes were
yet to be available, they had to develop a device
capable of ‘up-conversion’, i.e. increasing the detail
of the then existing SD material into HD format. This
of course was a highly complex task to achieve. To
convert a ¼ million pixel SD image into a 2 million
pixel HD image, the device should have a
sophisticated programming to ‘guess’ the missing
pixels in-between, which is essentially creating
nearly 90% of the image information from the
originally available 10%. Faroudja was successful in
such ground breaking attempt. And in June 1998,
Yves Faroudja won the Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime
Achievement Award by the Academy of Television
Arts and Sciences.
DCDi
®
The equipment developed to achieve the SD to HD
up-conversion for the broadcasters was of course
way beyond the budget of the domestic film
enthusiasts, but with the ever increasing power and
sophistication of microprocessors, it was clear to
Faroudja that this technology could eventually be
made available to the domestic market. DCDi
®
(Directional Correlational Deinterlacing) to give it its
complete title, pioneered affordable, high quality
video processing for the first time in the domestic
market.
DCDi
®
eliminates the jaggedness that conventional
up-converters causes to diagonal edges in video.
DCDi
®’
’s unique algorithm identifies all the moving
edges in a scene and adjusts the angle of
interpolation at each pixel so that the interpolation
always follows the edge instead of crossing it,
eliminating stair-casing or jagged edge artifacts. This
technology was first used in the Digital Format
Converter introduced in 1997. With its combination of
decoding, de-interlacing and enhancement
technologies, they won an Emmy Award from the
National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in
2001. In addition to being used in all Faroudja Home
Theatre and High Definition Broadcast products, the
DCDi algorithm has been incorporated into a wide
range of video sources and displays by different
manufacturers, identifiable by its distinctive DCDi
®
logo on their front panels.
1.3 – Video Processing Technology Primer
Crystalio is the only video processor on the market that
uses the latest Faroudja FL2300 DCDi
®
central
processor, so quite simply if you want to enjoy the
benefit of over 30 years of pioneering video
excellence – Crystalio is your video processor of choice.
Listed below are some state-of-the-art video processing
technologies that Crystalio offers to you:
Aspect Ratio Conversion
The aspect ratio of a video source describes the
proportion of the image’s width versus its height.
Traditionally, programmes made for television have
been made at a 4:3 aspect ratio (for every 3 units
high the picture is 4 units wide), whereas films have
used widescreen aspect ratios (16:9 or wider).
4:3 image 16:9 image (distorted)
For the image to look correct (i.e. to prevent the
image being distorted or stretched either vertically or
horizontally), every part of the playback ‘chain’, i.e.
the video source material, the video source and the
display, must be correctly configured.
Aspect Ratio Conversion is used to fit images on
displays with different aspect ratios while best
preserving the correct aspect ratio of the image.
NTSC and PAL contents including TV, VCR,
Camcorder and video games, typically have an
aspect ratio of 4:3.
NTSC and PAL contents can be shown on a 16:9
display using various forms of conversion, including
Pillar Boxing, Zoom and Non-Linear, referred to as
Anamorphic or Panoramic. Faroudja’s technology
varies aspect ratio and picture position to handle
traditional 4:3 aspect ratio sources and the wider
16:9 HDTV aspect ratio on a variety of display types
and video formats.
reference
i
nformation