While the majority of new TV purchases are HD Ready, DVD players including upscaling DVD players still account for the bulk of set-top playback devices. Also, only a very small percentage of older movie releases have been re-released in a high definition format and most consumers with a fair size DVD collection are not going to buy all their movies again in HD either. So up until now, manufacturers have tried improving playback of DVDs on HDTV sets through the use of upscaling. The drawback with upscaling is that the picture is usually just interpolated up to HD with a fixed amount of sharpening, regardless of the content in the image.
Hitachi LTD has developed what it calls "Super Resolution Technology", which claims to enhance the perceived resolution of the image being displayed. According to Hitachi, its technology works by analysing the luminance signals and then selectively processing regions of the image that need enhancement. For example, it can distinguish between a region which should be sharp (such as the subject in focus) and a region that should be blurred (such as the background).
With other upscaling technologies, they typically sharpen the entire image by a fixed amount, which can also affect the perspective. However, Hitachi's technology can vary the amount of sharpness applied region by region. Its technology will also work on channels already in HD, such as where a HD news channel is showing footage from a standard definition source.
The super resolution technology is performed on a frame-by-frame basis. So far, Hitachi has built a software processing method for its new technology and will exhibit it at Ceatec Japan 2008. Its next plan is to optimise its algorithm and develop a hardware processing LSI. Hitachi then hopes to launch HDTV sets with its super resolution technology after 2010.
