Quasar Ph.C | An innovative HDTV upconverter

Friday, September 08, 2006

On this blog we talk often about new plasma or LCD television but every once in a while we focus on new technologies that are not yet available or widespread. We will do the latter today because we will talk about a new HDTV upconverter with an interesting technology.

Before proceeding let me say that this product is intended mainly for broadcasters. However if widely used it can greatly improve the quality of the shows that we see on our TV so in the end we will be the beneficiary of its introduction.

An HDTV upconverter is a little publicized but fundamental device that works in the background to improve our viewing experience. It allows the digital signal (coming for example from a DVD player) to go straight to the TV without having to pass for the analogic conversion.

Besides the HDTV converter also increases the source signal’s resolution trying to adapt it to the one used by HDTVs reducing possible errors in the final image. Obviously this image will not be perfect like one coming from a High Definition source but a good upconverter will definitively come close to it.

The Quasar Ph.C, developed by Snell & Wilcox, has certainly the characteristics to be labelled as a good one. It is the first upconverter to integrate a motion estimation technology (created by Snell & Wilcox) that allows the device to output sharp high definition signal from a variety of SD inputs.

This innovation allows the Quasar Ph.C to better analyze an interlaced signal. With the normal upconverters the latter can cause flicker or distortion with fast moving images but this one is able to keep track of the single pixels between the two fields to avoid such issues.

The Quasar Ph.C is accepts as input interlaced SD signals with 525 (NTSC) or 625 (PAL, SECAM) lines and can output them to 720p and 1080i HDTV signals. Lastly this upconverter is also smart enough to determine the best output format for every input signal, to solve frame-rate issues with mixed media and to reduce the signal losses during the compression.