News

Algolith Exhibits Powerful Dragonfly Home Theater Processor/Scaler (6/10/2006)

CEDIA US Expo 2006

New Bleeding-Edge Digital Video Enhancer - Now Shipping - Packs Realta HQV(tm) Video Engine by Silicon Optix for Superb Big-Screen Image Quality

Algolith, a leading developer of video image enhancement solutions, announces it has begun shipments in North America and Europe of the highly anticipated Dragonfly Home Theater Processor/Scaler being exhibited at the Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association (CEDIA) Expo 2006, beginning here today.

The elegantly designed Dragonfly features the powerful Realta HQV(tm) 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 significantly beyond anything now available, and further advancing Algolith's position at the forefront of digital image enhancement.

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 uncompromising Realta platform, incorporated in the Dragonfly, sets a new benchmark standard of video excellence called Hollywood Quality Video, or HQVTM, making the Dragonfly ideal for use with Standard Definition DVDs, Satellite TV, and digital cable signals.

Dragonfly Heights

The Dragonfly achieves its remarkable 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 images as is done by conventional image processors.

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 significant 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.

In addition, an eWARP-2 engine allows AnyPlace(tm) flexible projector placement while maintaining superb graphics, text, and HD video quality. This gives users the freedom to place a projector anywhere in the room.

Reality the Realta Way

Silicon Optix's highly regarded 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. The Dragonfly can be seen with Algolith's other outstanding products in Booth 375, Colorado Convention Center, during the show.

www.algolith.com