[opendtv] Re: Analysis: Should Apple Buy Hollywood?

  • From: "Peter Wilson" <peter.wilson@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2012 15:03:05 -0000

The Realta is used by a few companies including Teranex and Calibre in the
UK.

It?s a long story.

When I was at Snell we developed the first de-interlacer / Scaler chip in
the mid 90's in partnership with IBM. IBM in their wisdom packaged it in
Gold plated Ceramic so it wasn?t a hot proposition for Consumer. It was used
in the Snell & Wilcox Interpolator Gold and several broadcast & industrial
processors. Quality was good from the BBC 3 Field Linear filter algorithm, I
demonstrated it and its ability to integrate TV and PC raster's to the FCC
and a couple of Senators in Washington in the mid 1990's as part of the ATSC
effort. Its limitation then was a max resolution of 800 x 600 SVGA which was
not a problem as that was where PC's sat. Bar being 8 bit rather than 10 for
broadcast its performance was equal to a Broadcast De-interlacer.

Snell mostly made custom products for Broadcast and were and still are
capable of designing De-interlacers from the ground up.

I shared a Technical Emmy for work in this field.

The problem today is that there is no scale in Broadcast, Teranex took
defence technology from I believe Lockheed Martin, developed it into
broadcast products and sold the IP on on for consumer, they now buy it back
in the form of Realta. Realta is not easy to use but can give spectacular
results.

Gennum made a De-interlacer chipset using Snell IP but pulled out of the
market when it became obvious that there was almost no margin in selling to
consumer and you couldn't charge enough over a few hundred chips with design
support in the pro market to make the business worthwhile.

So going back to the Realta, Teranex know how to programme it, so does
Calibre as they have been using it for years but why would you encourage a
bunch of new pro users if they will need extensive design support and only
buy a few hundred units.

The problem in Broadcast is you get what you pay for, Snell can sell you
motion adaptive or fully motion compensated De-Interlacers designed from the
ground up by engineers who have been doing it for the best part of 30 years,
Calibre and Teranex can sell you product based on the Realta with Teranex
algorithms that are 20 years in development, the problem comes if you expect
to get good performance from a consumer chip designed from a glossy data
sheet.

The other factor is that the Consumer companies have been studying this
issue for many years as well, some of them have the resource to make their
own ASICS and yes some of the ASICS can match the best motion adaptive
Broadcast De-interlacers but are not necessarily available on the open
market.

I bought a Sony 42" HD LCD about five years ago, my choice was based on the
fact that it had come tops in the BBC's evaluation and supported direct
connection of 1080P50/60 via HDMI. It was not cheap (£2250 list) but has a
very competent De-interlacer, I have been told that this model TV has never
been matched by the same company as the bean counters have worked their
magic on the BOM.

So to recap, basically the professional De-interlacer / Up-converter market
is not so large so you either use a consumer chip or design from scratch. If
you cannot buy the best chips due to volume being too small and you cannot
design from scratch then your performance is set by the price you want to
charge and the chipsets available.

Best Regards,
Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Craig Birkmaier
Sent: 07 March 2012 13:21
To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [opendtv] Re: Analysis: Should Apple Buy Hollywood?

At 10:54 PM -0500 3/6/12, Mark Schubin wrote:
>On 3/6/2012 12:39 PM, Craig Birkmaier wrote:
>>Then why not use the Realta chip in a broadcast de-interlacing product?
>Licensing

Are you saying that they will not license the technology for 
professional applications?

I thought Teranex developed a product using this chip.

Regards
Craig
 
 
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