14 DAY TRIAL // "Upconversion" is an extremely popular concept nowadays, as it allows users to enjoy an almost HD-grade cinematographic experience without actually using an HD signal source (such as a Blu-ray player). Several of the most important names on the consumer electronics market have already rolled out products embedding such a technology, the most famous of all being Toshiba, which used upconversion as its way of regaining some ground after the defeat of the HD DVD.
And, according to Japanese website TechOn, Hitachi has also decided to join in in this upconverting madness and announced that it had developed its own "Super Resolution Technology," which would dramatically change the way users experience video content. By using this technology, the standard definition video signal can be upconverted to resolutions close to 1920 x 1080.
Besides upconverting standard-definition images, this technology will (supposedly) push the limits of high-definition even further. According to Hitachi, it will actually be able to improve even digital terrestrial broadcasts, converting them to images at resolutions higher than 1920 x 1080. However, what those resolutions will be is still a mystery.
Actually, Hitachi has decided to cast a veil of secrecy over the specifics of this technology, revealing almost nothing about just how this advanced upconversion process is possible. All the company's representative (Koichi Hamada, chief researcher of the Embedded System Platform Research Laboratory in the Central Research Laboratory of Hitachi Ltd.) said was that "The resolution is estimated by analyzing the luminance signals of input images before performing the super resolution processing for multiple regions at a time."
Moreover, Hitachi's researcher also added that this technology would be able to "distinguish" a region that requires a sharper display (as for example, close view) from the background. In this way, the quality of the images is boosted, while the perspective remains unaffected.
For the time being, there's little on the exact moment when this revolutionary technology will actually be implemented in Hitachi's products, but the company hopes the first models will hit the market somewhere in the 2010 – 2012 time interval.
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