Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Can Gefen break new ground and introduce an affordable video processor?
Most people are already familiar with the idea of Upscaling DVD players. That is, DVD players that take your standard 480 line (NTSC) and 576 line (PAL) discs and claim to up-convert them to High Definition resolutions using image processing algorithms. Well, rather than being hard-wired to the output of an MPEG decoder like the (usually) cheap processors that are built in to upconverting DVD players, an external video processor uses much higher quality components and lets you upscale the video output of anything you hook up to it - not just DVDs.
"Doesn't my LCD or Plasma TV already scale the picture up?" you ask. Yes it does, but remember that these TVs need to be sold at a semi-affordable price point, so the processing in them is of the cheaper, mediocre-ish variety (yes, even in "expensive" brands of TV). That's not to say they can't produce nice results at times, but it's a far cry from optimal performance. Enter video processors (sometimes also referred to as "Scalers" after one of their key functions) - devices that take existing video and condition it to be just right for your individual model of display. Now that I finally have a "Full HD" 1920x1080p HDTV, I'm now looking towards getting one.
Processors aren't cheap and you can expect to pay anything from around $1000 to $4500 US smackers for one. Gefen, however, have just announced their Home Theater Scaler, which is up for pre-order for a supposed February release on their web site - for only $450. Suspiciously cheap perhaps, but not a rock-bottom price either. If it gets even some things right, then it could well end up being a must-have for a lot of people.
Here's what you can expect from this nifty (?) little device:
- Supports HD output all the way up to 1080p
- Dual 3D motion video adaptive de-interlacers with smooth low-angle edge - for smooth, low-jaggy playback of VIDEO content (that's the theory)
- Automatic 3:2 pull-down & 2:2 pull-down detection and recovery - for smooth, clear playback of both 50 and 60hz FILM content
- Frame rate conversion function, for unlucky North Americans who have TVs that can't natively display 50hz
- Some gimmicky sounding image "enhancement" functions
- Temporal Noise Reduction for analogue video inputs
And here's the inputs it has - as you can see, there's not a huge selection due to the size of the unit:
- 2x Component Video (Y/Pb/Pr) in for SD and HD, with accompanying Analogue Stereo audio inputs
- 2x HDMI inputs, with accompanying Digital audio inputs - both Optical and Coaxial
The thing is, for there to be any point of this product at all, the results that came from running your devices through it would obviously have to be better than connecting them directly to your TV. Supposedly, the device is built around a chipset from a company called Mstar, who nobody seems to have heard of. Hrrrmmm.
It's incredibly unlikely to better the results of the $2000 video processors, and from looking at the back of it, it's perhaps a little short on the connectivity front, but if it does what it claims to and does it well, then Gefen have a revolutionary product on their hands, and who knows - some video processing die-hards think that it it could just trigger the beginning of the end for processors with 4-figure price tags. I'm going to be watching this one VERY, very closely.
Watch this site for news on the Home Theater Scaler as it comes in.
Posted at 10:46 PM
