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Technology Overview
The technology developed, acquired and patented by Genesis Microchip, makes us a clear market leader in the display industry. Our portfolio of technologies and patents enables us to provide industry-leading products and services in the LCD Monitor and Flat Panel TV markets.
DTV Technologies
With the global shift to include digital television services to existing analog capabilities, new TVs must continue to deliver the purest and most satisfying visual and audio experience, including a rich set of analog and digital connectivity. Genesis Microchip's PūrVIEW HD™ family of DTV controllers provides the industry with a novel, flexible and cost-effective approach to solving these core issues in a manner that delivers a high quality TV experience to end users. These solutions include:
Video Quality
- Enables access to complete range of Genesis & Faroudja Video Enhancements
- May be paired with any Genesis Video Controller
- Allows your proprietary video processing or color control to be used in a DTV system
Crystal clear User Interface and Electronic Program Guide:
- Video eXpansion Interface (VXI) enables graphics overlay without compromise
- Removes the blurring caused when video and graphics are combined before scaling
- Enables a glueless interface to proprietary video ICs
Firmware media acceleration/upgrades
- VLIW's may be repurposed for other chores e.g.
- Accelerated JPEG decoding
- Decode other media types
- Other Audio format support (including "non-standard" audio types)
- Codecs for Audio/Video communications
Simple migration from existing analog chassis or Cortez designs
- DTV may be added to any existing analog chassis as a simple addition
- Simple retargeting of existing TV UI developed previously on Cortez family using Genesis Workbench tool
One DTV solution, Many products
- A single DTV board design may be populated by pin compatible Cortez family products
- Cortez-Lite/Hudson for volume markets
- Cortez-Advanced for PIP enabled 10bit video processing and 1080P display
- Firmware compatible Cortez family enable a range of DTV products with minimal effort
Scaling
Image scaling continues to have a significant impact on the display industry, as displays move from analog to pixelated digital displays. In pixelated displays (LCD, Plasma, DLP and LCOS), scaling is required to deliver accurate and viewable images from all PC graphics resolutions (VGA, XGA, SXGA, UXGA and higher) as well as TV broadcast standards (Standard-Definition TV signals: NTSC, PAL, SECAM, and High-Definition TV signals) onto displays with different native resolutions and aspect ratios without creating objectionable artifacts. Genesis was the first to develop and offer single-chip scaling solutions. Building upon its extensive scaling patent portfolio, Genesis continues to invent cost-effective, highly integrated components that deliver outstanding image quality on flat screen televisions. Genesis scaling technology is a key enabler to the industry growth and consumer acceptance of the fixed-pixel television display as preferable replacements to CRT television.
LCD Response Time Compensation
Liquid crystal displays offer sharp, crisp images. However, they may introduce motion blur because the pixels cannot transition fast enough from one video frame to the next. One way to overcome this is to use digital response time compensation (RTC) technology, which ‘overdrives‘ the display to make it transition faster. Genesis uses this technology to enable LCDs to respond as fast as CRTs - for displaying motion video without motion blur.
Advanced Color Management
Most video content, including television shows and movies, was originally created to be displayed on a CRT TV (which has high brightness levels and a high contrast ratio) or in a movie theater (which has low ambient lighting levels). However, LCD displays are typically not as bright and have lower contrast levels than CRT displays. As a result, video content tends to look dimmer and less colorful when viewed on LCD displays. Genesis Microchip‘s Advanced Color Management suite of algorithms includes Adaptive Color and Contrast (ACC™) and Active Color Management (ACM-II™) technologies to enhance colors and adaptively augment contrast levels for LCD displays. Additionally, the color management tools allow implementation of various theme modes for the display. Themes such as Nature Mode, Sports Mode and others are defined by the display manufacturer and allow end users to choose the most desirable settings.
DCDi® by Faroudja
DCDi® by Faroudja represents a suite of video enhancement technologies that produce exceptional image quality without introducing artifacts:
- Directional Correlational Deinterlacing (DCDi)
Genesis‘s subsidiary, Faroudja, produced upconversion equipment to allow broadcasters to continue using existing equipment to broadcast legacy NTSC material during the transition to HDTV. Faroudja then developed DCDi® (Directional Correlational Deinterlacing) technology to eliminate the jagginess that conventional upconverters introduced 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 staircasing or jagged edge artifacts. This technology, in combination with its decoding, deinterlacing and enhancement technologies, won an Emmy Award from National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 2001. The DCDi algorithm is now incorporated into Genesis Microchip‘s video controllers that were derived from the Faroudja technology. Many consumer electronics products utilizing this Emmy award-winning technology leverage the Faroudja brand with the ”DCDi® by Faroudja”, ”Faroudja DCDi Cinema®” and ”Faroudja DCDi Edge®” logos on their products and marketing materials.
- Film Mode Detection Technology
Genesis-owned Faroudja invented and patented film mode detection or 3:2 pulldown detection in 1989. Film-originated content that has gone through 3:2 pulldown for conversion to NTSC is detected and the original film frames are recreated by blending the fields back together. However, this creates an artifact known as ”a comb”. Faroudja became the first company with ”bad edit detection” capability to detect the original frames of film within the video stream and reconstruct an accurate image. This produced an image free of motion artifacts with full vertical resolution. One environment where this creates a lot of value is when users switch back and forth between commercials on TV (which are not film mode) and a movie which is film mode. This Film mode processing is widely accepted in the industry.
- TrueLife™ Enhancement
Conventional video enhancement is done by a ”peaking filter” that enhances the high-frequency components of the video signal. However, this creates unwanted artifacts. Genesis does not use a peaking filter to enhance an image, rather uses its TrueLife™ Enhancement technology to identify transitions considered to be the details in an image such as skin texture, freckles or hair. These detail transitions are deliberately enhanced making them more visible and more lifelike. The technology also enhances large edges to create greater depth of perception without introducing visual artifacts or distortion.
- Motion Adaptive Noise Reduction
Noise on an image is typically eliminated or reduced by filtering. Filtering can be done spatially, (2-D), or temporally, (3-D). Spatial filtering results in a soft image with loss of detail. Temporal filtering does not create loss of detail, but if done incorrectly, does result in smearing or ghosting of moving objects in the image. Genesis uses Motion Adaptive processing to reduce noise without introducing smearing.
Cross Color Suppression
Cross color is an artifact produced by the imperfect decoding of composite video. High frequency luma components are incorrectly decoded as chroma signals, causing colorization where there should be none. This colorization can be detected in many types of ”busy” scenes including tiled rooftops, herringbone patterned clothing, leafy scenery, etc. The most common and visible cross color artifacts are flickering that occurs at 15 Hz rate, flashing colors or rainbow patterns. The artifact can be eliminated in still images by using temporal averaging of the chroma signals, the same methodology that is used in a 3-D comb filter. However, this cannot be done wherever there is motion because of the motion artifacts created, just as with deinterlacing using field weaving. Genesis‘s Faroudja-based Cross Color Suppression uses the motion detector to selectively perform the temporal filtering only where there is no motion in the image and to use the already existing frame memory for the chroma storage required. Even cross-color that has been encoded onto a DVD recorded from a composite source can be suppressed using this technology.
Aspect Ratio Conversion
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 content, including TV, DVD, Camcorder and video games typically has an aspect ratio of 4X3.NTSC content can be shown on a 16X9 display using various forms of conversion, including Pillar boxing, Zoom and Non-Linear, referred to as Anamorphic or Panoramic. Genesis‘s Faroudja technology varies aspect ratio and picture position to handle traditional 4 by 3 aspect ratio sources and the wider 16 by 9 HDTV aspect ratio on a variety of display types and video formats.
DisplayPort
DisplayPort is the new high bandwidth digital interconnect standard proposed by Genesis together with ATI, Dell, HP, NVIDIA, Philips, Samsung, Tyco, and Molex through VESA, the Video Electronics Standard Association. DisplayPort greatly simplifies connectivity for streaming media from IC to IC, within a system and from system to system. DisplayPort allows streaming up to six high definition TV channels simultaneously in the same number of wires that current standards require in order to only handle one high definition TV stream. DisplayPort will also enable this same simplicity and capability in notebook PCs and other applications. Genesis is actively preparing products that support this standard.
View the DisplayPort presentation.
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