Algolith Exhibits Dragonfly Home Theater Processor/Scaler
Thursday, 28 September 2006
Algolith,
a developer of video image enhancement solutions, announces it has
begun shipments in North America and Europe of the Dragonfly Home
Theater Processor/Scaler, which was exhibited at the CEDIA Expo in
Denver.
The Dragonfly features the powerful Realta HQV
Video Engine by Silicon Optix, the leading supplier of advanced
video/image digital processing integrated circuits. It embodies
Algolith’s vision of providing superlative image quality.
The Dragonfly represents a collection of engineering achievements that
reach new heights and is a must for videophiles passionate about their
high-performance Home Theaters and entertainment systems. The Dragonfly
will up- or down-scale, de-interlace and cadence-correct all video
signals from 480i to 1080p. Using technology previously available only
to film directors and video professionals, the Dragonfly allows viewers
of large-screen displays — plasma, LCD and projection — to benefit from
advanced de-interlacing, detail enhancement, and noise reduction
processing.
Silicon Optix’s Realta platform, incorporated in the Dragonfly, sets a
new benchmark standard of video excellence called Hollywood Quality
Video, or HQV, making the Dragonfly ideal for use with Standard
Definition DVDs, Satellite TV, and digital cable signals.
Dragonfly Heights The
Dragonfly achieves its performance by combining several proprietary
features. Key among them is Dragonfly’s True 1080i to 1080p
De-Interlacing capability, which uses the full four-field processing
window for HD video de-interlacing and cadence detection, preserving
the rich details in HD imagery, instead of discarding half the
resolution of HD.
A true 10-bit diagonal interpolator
removes so-called jaggies and stair-stepping artifacts from
de-interlaced video sources without blurring the image, and a unique
Noise Reduction capability, available as an option, reduces the analog
and MPEG noise artifacts that plague DVD and broadcast sources. It
achieves this through a fully automatic adaptive software algorithm
that adds a fourth dimension of pixel-by-pixel noise and motion
measurement.
Dragonfly’s detail enhancement improves the image detail on a
pixel-by-pixel basis, delivering standard-definition (SD) quality that
approaches HD, instead of the blurring effect often encountered when
watching SD images on HD displays.
Another feature is Dragonfly’s Automatic Film Mode Cadence Processing,
which delivers a quantum improvement in the automatic handling of film
and video sources. It also delivers industry-first support for such
Vari-Speed cadences as 3:2:3:2:2 that are commonly used for movies
broadcast on TV; as well as the 5:5, 6:4, and 8:7 cadences used for
animation. Cadence processing ensures viewers are always watching film
and video sources in their original formats without losing resolution.
Dragonfly’s Automatic Per Pixel Video/Film Detection capability allows
the processor to make pixel-level decisions when processing film pixels
as film and video pixels as video — rather than frame-level decisions,
which can lead to visible artifacts in video titles over film
backgrounds.
Reality the Realta Way Silicon
Optix’s Realta HQV platform is a system-on-a-chip that encompasses true
10-bit video processing, full four-field, pixel-based, motion-adaptive
video deinterlacing for SD and HD signals, temporal-recursive and codec
noise reduction, automatic multi-cadence detection, and pixel-based
detail enhancement. It uses the same video processing power — one
trillion operations per second — as the famous $60,000 Teranex Xantus
box, and also incorporates specialized Intellectual Property solutions
provided by Algolith.
Teranex‘s professional
broadcast-quality video processing platform, with thousands of display
signal processors, has been integrated into the Realta chip. Teranex
software algorithms, refined though over 100,000 hours of content
verification, have a proven reputation for quality.
Realta’s core technologies enable dual HD image streams to be
simultaneously processed, delivering HQV into home entertainment and
professional video display products. Further enhancing the user
experience, Realta supports advanced picture-in-picture (PIP) and
split-screen (side-by-side) windowing modes. Each live image window can
be independently processed, scaled, sized and positioned anywhere on
the display surface. A powerful OSD engine, driven by a 250 MHz RISC
CPU, enables 2-D graphics and real-time animation.
An onboard PCI interface allows the Dragonfly software to be fully
upgraded and re-programmed via the Web, ensuring that each viewer’s
experience can be fully optimized, now and in the future. New video
processing algorithms can be downloaded through the Dragonfly’s USB
port, helping the Dragonfly stay at the bleeding-edge of video
processing technology.
In addition to the Noise Reduction Option, the Dragonfly can also be
equipped with an SDI Option, which adds a small external converter that
allows users to pass 480i and 576i signals through to the Dragonfly’s
digital input.
Algolith’s Dragonfly, which includes a remote control, is available now
from authorized Algolith dealers at a suggested price of $2,995, with
the Noise Reduction and SDI Input options available at an additional
$495 each.
Source: Press Release
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