Eyes-on with Hitachi Super Resolution TV
By Richard Lawler 
posted Jan 12th 2009 7:17PM
posted Jan 12th 2009 7:17PM
posted Jan 12th 2009 7:17PM
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Of the $13.8 billion worth of returned products in 2007, only 5 percent were because gadgets were actually broken, according to a 2008 study.
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I can't believe it, but I'm impressed. This is pretty good stuff.
Yeah, like Glamore Shots. Making your wife to look better than she really is.
Is it just me or is the left side really SD + blur?
Agreed. SD doesn't look that bad upscaled on my TV. It actually looks more like the "Super Resolution" side. At least for DVDs, which I'm guessing this is for mainly. Cable TV is a different story but is still an improvement when the box is set to only output 720p/1080i. Upscaling, Super Resolution...whatever your PR dept wants to market it as I guess.
looks like the left side is just stretched from the original aspect, and the right side is in its correct aspect. if you stretch any kind of image and then return it to its original size, you'd notice the diff. why are these people toying with consumers? why don't they work on some real tech advances? i dont see panasonic doin anything goofy like this...
Crazy companies.. trying to improve on DVD when they can just throw all that away and go with less then 1% Blu-Ray marketshare :)
On a more serious note:
This looks actually much nicer then Toshiba's version and much closer to HD.
A couple bad reviews aside (and some personal vendetta against Toshiba by Engadget for some odd reason), the Toshiba upscaling XDE is amazing.
I'd like to see a head-to-head comparison to this Hitachi.
Toshibas XDE is like adding 200% sharpnesss. It's terrible. Hopefully Hitachi actually does something with the image besides blow out the sharpness. Kind of like Samsung blows out colors.
How much better do people really think upscaling is going to get? It's not like you can make detail out of nothing. I mean I applaud the effort, but shouldn't we just focus on moving everything to HD for cheap instead?
I agree. It's almost like they are trying to made everything that is SD magically turn into HD. And ya wanna know why that is? Because a lot of people are TOO CHEAP to pay an extra 10 bucks a month for HD programming! Upscaling DVD players are a great idea, HOWEVER, they will be obsolete in 2-3 years when blu-ray players are only 50 bucks (give or take).
It's because currently EVERYONE on the planet has far more SD material then HD, so it makes sense to cater for the massive market that still exists.
R U suggesting everyone just bin years of home movies because it's not HD?
I want HD, but I sure as hell want the best up scaling technology there is for my massive DVD library and 20 years worth of home movies and generally speaking, most BR players suck at SD upscaling!
There is no question, the left side is blurry.
Why are companies always trying to GO BACKWARDS!! We don't want to go backwards with our technology; we want to improve it and MOVE FORWARD, GET BETTER!!
How do we know that the DVD or SD content in question is no a gimmick by Toshiba. I would have to see it with my own eyes and use my own SD content or DVD to see how well it does. If it does do better on SD content, great, I am all for it, esp. for the 2 SD channels I watch once a month or for that old DVD that I never get around to putting on.
Last, this is for Gus, BR players are awesome at up-conversion, especially the PS3, one of the best upconverters on the market.
I for one would like to see a standard DVD upconverted on a PS3 compared to this Toshiba crap and see which looks better. I have a feeling they'd look about the same.
gr689
"BR players are awesome at up-conversion, especially the PS3, one of the best upconverters on the market".
LMAO
What a joke.
Everyone (except the most biased fanboy) knows that for some (highly suspicious) reason Blu-ray players tend to be amongst the worst at upscaling and the best of them tend to be no more than very average.
On topic -
Of course Gus is right, those of us with several hundred DVD movies want the best upscaling/uopconversion possible and it will heavily influence buying decisions.
I also want this tech in my next HD TV because a hell of a lot of SD content is going to be around for a very long time.
It's plain & obvious one-eyed stupidity for the Blu-ray fanclub to dismiss this
(just because they see it as a threat to their beloved format),
in the real world this is exactly what people will want and expect.
Nobody is going to be replacing their DVD collections just to suit the profitability aims and forecasts of the greedy CE corps & their movie studio pals - or the Blu-ray fans desperate to see their preferred format do better than it currently is.
Just like some of those commenting on the 2tb SD cards/flash drives (with 300Mbps bandwidth) it's hilarious to see the game console gang exposed for the biased format fans they really are, Luddites to anything not Blu-ray and certainly not really movie fans either.
Multiformat, I have several reviews of BD players (on paper and in French unfortunately) where the reviews consider the upscaling capability as very good so obviously it is a wee bit more than "biased fanboys" that believe they are not too bad at this.
And no it is not BD-only magazines!
Perhaps it is you that have a narrow and biased view on things?
gr689 - this is a Hitachi product. Put your kneejerk response to upscaling aside for just a second.
Upscaling is going to continue to be popular and important for the time being because most content is SD, and because Blu-ray sucks and because the cable and satellite companies are generally charging more for HD content thus resulting in the majority of HDTVs being hooked up to SD feeds (worse still, in glorious stretch-o-vision.)
Until cheap HD reaches the masses, and most content is available in it, upscaling will remain important.
The bottom line is that you can not invent information that is not there. For most cases upscalers makes a visible but certainly not sensational improvement of the image (sometimes it actually gets worse) and there's really not that much difference between one upscaler and another.
Upscaling is just the latest new sales hype to attempt and cash in on peoples interrest for HD but it certainly do not replace a proper HD original like Blu-ray.
Even the sane "super resolution" is a laughable invention of some marketing guy to dupe a few more people to think there's something special with their stuff.
Jonsson @ Jan 13th 2009 7:49AM
"The bottom line is that you can not invent information that is not there."
How many times?
It is there, actually.
It's a matter of extracting the tiny differences in detail between each individual frame being looked at and 'x number' of frames before and after that individual fame being shown.
Then they combine them all together onto that frame being shown.
(that is assuming this is a variation of the Toshiba tech - have Hitachi licenced the Toshiba stuff, like Sharp have?)
The stunning thing is that they can now do this in real time with video and cheaply enough to bring to market.
Those who want to pretend this cannot be done better have a word with courts across the whole world and NASA.
Because combing individual frames for additional detail and combining them onto a single fame is exactly what the forensic Police and NASA scientists have been doing for decades.
The Blu-ray fans might not want to hear it but that does not make it any less true or real.
How many times, the information is NOT there actually!
It is interpolation. Every upscaling algorithm tries to GUESS what color the missing pixel should have based on the information it has.
Read what I wrote before writing stupid things about "having talks with courts". I didn't say the image could not be improved. I said the improvement was not sensational and certainly not anywhere near proper HD quality (like Blu-ray). And I also said that sometimes the image actually gets worse since the upscaling and shaperning algorithms mistake defects in the original for intentional details and sharpens them up as well.
The only way to get a proper HD image (especially of older work) is to go back to the originals and remaster them at full resolution. With old originals this might involve carefully restoring them. This is NOT done in real time.
MFM - the "Government agencies" stuff, where done at all, is done using a physically demanding process that requires human intervention. Yes, previous and future frame information is used, but it requires a certain amount of skill to know where it comes from.
On top of this, virtually all digital compression systems - with the exception of frame by frame systems like MJPEG - LOSE THE DETAIL. Remember that every variant of MPEG video compression - MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4 Part 2, and MPEG4 Part 10 - compresses video by comparing groups of frames and looking for movement. Compression in all these video formats takes the form of a collection of "Transform and correct" commands, where 16x16 pixel macroblocks are moved from one part of the picture to another, and then have slight differences accounting for changes in lighting and orientation, adjusted through a DCT transform vector.
So, honestly, anything based upon automated comparisons of previous/next frames is going to provide very limited improvements to image quality. And, to add insult to injury, those improvements are only going to work well where there's lots of movement, which also happens to be the area where the difference between HD and interpolated SD is invisible to 90% of viewers.
I love the fact there's a lot of effort being made to improve SD picture quality. And yes, much of it is effective, especially when efforts have been made with the source material to make it look good in interpolated SD. My Toshiba HD A2 does a stunning job with various movies, such as Live Free or Die Hard. Given the poor projection standards at most cinemas I've been to, I'd say in many cases the various automated algorithms end up presenting a better picture with SD DVD than you'd get at many cinemas. (Projectionists! Learn how to focus the damned projector!)
But the "Government agencies" crap has to stop. What they do is not automated. It doesn't work well for highly compressed digital movies. What Toshiba and Hitachi and Sony and the others who are trying to build better upscalers are doing has little or nothing to do with what Abby pretends she can do in NCIS.
The information IS NOT there, there is no use pretending that it is. It might be possible to infer a little extra detail, possibly by comparing frames but certainly not anywhere close to proper HD.
A simple example would be a 2x2 grid showing a black dot on a white background. The dot lays midway between some pixels causing each pixel to be a shade of gray. If this were super upscaled to a 4x4 grid, the upscaler has absolutely no way of knowing if the dot was actually square, triangular or spherical. Even if the dot was jittering a little and multiple frames were used to compose the final image, there is no way that it would ever approach the quality of the dot if it were captured at 4x4 to begin with. This simple example doesn't even consider the extra complications of handling interlaced, possibly anamorphic, lossy content arriving in realtime.
It's certainly not a bad feature to have in a TV, assuming it can be turned off for each input, but people who expect HD content are deluding themselves. It doesn't matter if its Toshiba, Hitachi or Sony making the claims. The slides for this particular TV suggest they're just doing selective edge enhancement which is all the Toshiba 46XV545U did when CNet called it a gimmick.
Ahh, Multi, you're back. I hadn't seen you in a while and I was a bit worried. Glad you're still around making irrelevant posts though.
Your point about NASA would be better taken if NASA did not have some of the best HD cameras in the world trained on the space shuttle now for every launch. I suggest you watch a launch in HD, if you ever get the chance. It's phenomenal, and second only to watching one in person. The point is, unlike you, NASA does NOT think that upconverting is "good enough".
As for the "courts", those types of videos are upscaled using a trained video technician who not only has access to the videotape, but can actually go to the scene to take measurements as well. They then spend lots of time painstakingly cleaning up the video. I don't think Toshiba's upscaling DVD players come with a little video technician inside.
Many of the reviews I've read about upscaling in BD players has been pretty positive, especially the PS3. I can personally vouch for the PS3 as well. The one review I've read about the Toshiba player wasn't exactly stellar. These are from unbiased sources. Though you seem to be the conspiracy theory type, so to you I'm sure there's no such thing as an unbiased source.
Just because you call yourself "Truth Teller" doesn't make all the garbage you spew "true", so please stop with the false sense of intelligence. And just because someone disagrees with you doesn't make them a blind fanboy. You are perhaps the biggest anti-fanboy who posts here, and it's quite evident to everyone who reads your posts. As a result, your posts are about as relevant as any fanboy post would be. You should try to temper your hatred for Blu-Ray a bit. It might make people take you more seriously. (uggh, as I typed that I could already read your response in my head, you don't hate Blu, you are just pointing out the facts, I'm a fanboy...blah blah blah...any chance that saved you some typing? I'm sure I didn't.)
I couldn't agree more with you, you cannot get something that is not there, example, a forest in the background, there is no way any upscaler can make those trees crystal clear,it's all hype and everyone is taking advantage of it because the upscaling players are cheap.
People who spend thousands on their high def tv's are going to want pure high def content and the public is smart enough to see the difference between an upscaled picture and a blu-ray disc.
NIUHuskie
Actually NASA do use frame by frame comparison (and have done for decades).
I've watched several HD NASA programs thanks, but them having HD cameras is utterly irrelevant to the point that they do use frame by frame analysis.
I'm having a good laugh at the way 'the usual suspects' think they know all about how this works when we have yet to have any explaination of what method Hitachi are using
(and we have a the 'frame by frame' explaination from Toshiba).
You've got to be kidding about the PS3 as a good upscaler though, I guess it's great if you ignore all the good ones (like the Reons & QDeos of this world).
But it's simply a fact that disappointing upscaling is what you get with almost all the Blu-ray players (deliberately so?).
The rest is your own silly little inventions and name-calling BS, have fun!
Multi-format-mayhem @ Jan 13th 2009 3:46PM
"You've got to be kidding about the PS3 as a good upscaler though, I guess it's great if you ignore all the good ones (like the Reons & QDeos of this world).
But it's simply a fact that disappointing upscaling is what you get with almost all the Blu-ray players (deliberately so?)."
You keep saying this, but I've seen many say the exact opposite (and not just on this site). I've seen other upscaled DVDs (A30 and some oppo model) and happen to think the PS3 was just as good a picture as those (marginally better at the most). The A30 has a Reon doesn't it? Do you have any way to substantiate this claim (professional review or otherwise) or is this just some opinion you formed long ago for whatever reason and keep pitching in these arguments?
What is it with you blinded blu ray tools!
For gods sakes, this is not about fighting against your baby Jesus, this is simply a way to extract the best you can out of the SD material you have for FK's sake!
It's like a call to arms and all the usual blu bandits rush in and smash anything that in their tiny little blu minds might pose the smallest of threats to their beloved, get you hands off your dicks and GROW UP!!
For SD content, this type of process is brilliant, and as I said earlier, for my massive DVD library I want the best SD process money can buy.
As I read elsewhere, the best possible scenario for EVERYONE, is a quality profile 2.0 blu ray player stand alone player that has the best possible SD support available, SD cards readers built in for movies, (as the new Panasonic decks do I presume they can process movies on SD cards??),and a good quality media streamer as well, so stop the bitching tarts, if blu ray gets there act together and builds the above player, you have the ultimate in home entertainment center and I for 1 will buy immediately. (sorry, i don't want a PS3).
A fully integrated deck as described above would be an awesome future proof system, someone please tell me if there is one other than PS3 all ready so I can buy one.
To you blinded blu ray fanboys, stop seeing progress in other areas as competition and embrace it and use it instead, maybe then blu ray can take the market over.
To hang on to spinning disc technology and shun everything else will doom blu ray to remaining a niche, so keep up the good work.
daaper
"The A30 has a Reon doesn't it?"
No.
The Toshiba HD-XA2 & the Onkyo DV-HD805 had Reon. The LG BH200 has QDeo.
The A30/35 had an Ancor Bay chipset, it wasn't bad either but the Reon chipset is widely renowned as being significantly superior.
Sorry, that should of course have been 'Anchor Bay (technologies) chipset'.
"daaper
"The A30 has a Reon doesn't it?"
No.
The Toshiba HD-XA2 & the Onkyo DV-HD805 had Reon. The LG BH200 has QDeo.
The A30/35 had an Ancor Bay chipset, it wasn't bad either but the Reon chipset is widely renowned as being significantly superior."
Ah, ok. So, since I already have a PS3 for DVD playback, it seems the best scenario for me would be to get a receiver with a good upscaler (like an Onkyo 875)? Just turn the upscaler off in the PS3 and let the receiver do the work. Is the improvement over the Onkyo 805 really worth the $700 premium (thinking more about SD TV than DVD playback)?
I have nothing but good things to say about my own Onkyo.
Superb with movies and music and as an upscaler (the manual doesn't mention it or make it obvious but there's a hidden menu to adjust the Reon processing if you need to, see the Onkyo owners forum at avs).
(except it is a very heavy beasty - over 66lbs in dead weight - but that's the price you pay for high quality components)
I guess I don't see why so many see this tech as a threat to BR/HD. Can't the two coexist? This is to make your existing DVD collection/SD TV channels look the best they possibly can, but it's not a replacement for true HD content. They include this tech in TVs for the my SD content that still exists, while everything new that I buy is HD (BR, in my case). Why is this so difficult?
You're perfectly right. It is a nice enough technology that DOES NOT replace Blu-ray or any other full HD material.
I have two upscaling components (player and A/V reciever) myself.
The gripe I believe people have (including me) is marketing hype trying to make this stand out as some wonderful new tech that is equal to proper HD material (BD or others) like the sore-loosers-Toshiba.
The million dollar question is this:
Has the image on the left been upscaled or not?
Comparing this suposed super duper upscaler against raw SD footage is like monster comparing their HDMI cable against composite video.
Of course it looks better. But does it look better than a cheap 50 dollar upscaling player you pick up at Target?
Er, yes it has. The major clue is that if it wasn't upconverted, it'd either be much smaller, or it'd be very, very, pixellated.
Being scaled does not necessarily mean it has been up-converted to higher resolution.
I have up-conversion in my 2000 dollar TV. I have up-conversion in my 300 dollar blu-ray player. And I have up-conversion in my 100 dollar upconverting DVD player. Its very easy to see the difference between non-upconverted signals being fed through composite or s-video cable and an upconverted signal via HDMI or component. But its not so easy to see the difference between the three up-converted signals themselves. Specification list pissing contests aside, upconversion is upconversion is upconversion.
So the question remains, how do we know this system is really any better than exisiting upconverters built into just about everything these days?
This is, after all, an image from the Hitachi booth at CES. Do we just TRUST that these companies are telling us the whole TRUTH in their displays? I sure as heck don't. Companies twist the truth all the time to sell you crap you don't need or which is no better than the competition:
href=http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/04/21/in-store-demo-compares-monster-hdmi-interconnect-to-composite-ca/
Until I see this independently verified I'm taking this for what it likely is: marketing hype.
You asked if the left image had been upconverted. The answer is yes. If it wasn't upconverted, it'd either be smaller, or pixellated. That's not open for argument. It hasn't been scaled, if it was, it would be made up of huge square pixels. It's been upconverted, not scaled.
It's an interesting question as to whether "Super resolution" is better or worse than XDE, or the various interpolation schemes, but that's not what you asked.
There's an application some may be missing - the DISH722 receiver outputs SD (480i) to the secondary location and anything that improves this is welcomed. I'm sure there are other uses where SD is the only available source.
I don't believe Toshiba has ever stated that this should replace HD DVD or Blu-ray, just that it can make your SD collection look better.
I have over 1600 DVDs. I would like them to look the best they can on my HDTV. I doubt that majority of them will ever be released on BD (which I also collect) because I consider it and HD DVD to be a high end niche for videophiles.
I don't know if BD will outlast SD, but I doubt it. I collected laserdisc, but VHS outlived that videophile format, also.
Toshiba is merely taking advantage of the billions of DVDs already out there. All the other player (and HDTV, apparently) manufacturers are also doing this - why pick on Toshiba?
The thing with this super resolution is that it expects your input resolution to be SD, i.e. 480i. If you already have an upscaling DVD player you will have no use for a TV like this, or you will be forced to choose whether to disable the players upscaling in favour of the TVs.
Same if not worse applies for other equipment. If you have an HD cable / satellite receiver, the chances are that it will upscale all the content before it arrives at the TV whether it was SD or HD content to start with. It's only people with just SD inputs who might appreciate super resolution, and seriously how many people are buy a mid-range HDTV and not upgrade their other devices at the same time?
This story is about Hitachi. It mentions Toshiba because EHD are dicks, but the story itself is about a Hitachi technology.
Lanczos resize and a sharpness filter.... magic?
Though not stated, implied in the name of super resolution is sampling not only in the spacial domain, i.e. in the image being displayed, but also temporal i.e.previous and possibly subsequent frames, done correctly its quite surprising just how much you can get from other images of similar content.
For instance consider a Bayer pattern array, you could consider this to be 4 different signals (slightly offset and selecting varying parts of the visible spectrum) which if you know how can be recombined to give a better picture than their native resolution would suggest. Alternatively consider what stochastic multi-sampling in games does to the quality of the images.
Admittedly in the case of streaming media, you'd probably only be able to implement a small number of temporal samples without adding a noticeable amount of lag to the signal, but if you delay the audio too then all should be good.
Another example would be SIGGRAPH last year had a paper or two on the concept of 'upresing' SD content using a single high resolution image of the scene (and a lot of image processing).
Like I said above, upscaling based upon previous and future content only works if you're using an uncompressed source.
MPEG works by comparing frames and looking for movement. Essentially, other than a few JPEG-like reference frames, the majority of an MPEG stream (be it 1, 2, 4p2 or 4p10) consists of commands saying "Move the 16x16 block that's at position (X,Y) in the last frame to position (X2, Y2), and apply this slight delta to it."
So, quite simply, when you compress using one of the MPEG standards, you do lose the information your fancy upscaler was planning to use to upscale the content.
Toshiba's XDE, and presumably this Hitachi technology, works on a frame by frame basis. It looks for likely edges, and enhances them. It looks for certain colour patterns, and tries to create a more natural look. It enhances contrasts where need be. Look at most "super-upscaled" content demos, and what you generally see is not more information, but the contrasts adjusted where the algorithm believes it should be improved.
It can be much better than mere interpolation alone, but it really isn't doing anything fancy to obtain HD content from where HD was never stored. It's just touching up an SD source.
I see a difference but what does it matter when both pictures are 4 inches? Until I can see this up close and personal, it doesn't mean much of anything.
And why would you buy this if you can get an actual HD set for 5 or 6 hundred bucks?
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