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Sony Develops TVs That Zoom in for True Close-ups
prakslash writes "Sony has unveiled version 2 of its 'Digital Reality Creation' technology that allows viewers to pan around a TV image and then zoom in. Unlike the current TVs that simply scale the image, Sony's technology does 'true' zooming by digitally enhancing the signal to communicate gloss, depth and texture.
digitally enhancing the signal to communicate gloss, depth and texture
Ya know, I was going to make the obvious joke, then I realized that what I'm thinking about, I actually *don't* want to zoom in on. Some things are best left to the imagination, lest you see the reality (and the bumps and blisters and pimples). Ewww.
So, umh, this would be cool for zooming in on puppies and stuff. Yeah.
Cool, wish I had this during the last SuperBowl!
another technological innovation brought to you by pr0n.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
If only this was around for a certain Australian beauty queens strut down the catwalk last week. *sigh* Pan Baby!
Other than for porn?
Which you can't get good porn on telly anyway.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
I refuse to accept "digital zoom" as being any better than just putting a magnifying glass next to the same old low res image.
Come on, it's trying to create data that just plain isn't coming from the original source, therefore it's nothing but guess and check logic. Sure it my smooth out what it thinks is a rough edge... but that's still only guessing and making up detail that just wasn't there.
Wow and I thought FCC regulations were the only thing to come out of Janet Jackson's boobies. It goes to show that pornography still provides the incentive for innovation for all major developing technologies. It's actually a little known fact that the people offering the incentives for new space elevator technology are only doing so in hopes of losing their virginity in it one day.
Should be cool but a DVR is a must to take advantage of this feature.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
True zoom is a bit of a stretch.. The only way you could have a true zoom is if you have a higher resolution digital image to look at, or an analog image... This produce creates sophisticated, but generated results. There is nothing true about it.
Regardless, this is one of those features that "sounds nice", but I think its the company telling the consumer what to want rather than vice versa. Never once have I wanted to zoom in on a modern or high def television image.
Glad we'll finally be able to clear that Kennedy thing up.
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
real zoom requires additional information, ie higher resolution than tv is capable of displaying. all attempts at "simulation" of higher resolution will result in digital zoom artifacts, that we all are familiar with.
unless tv has lower resolution than broadcast quality this is as fake as 200X DIGITAL ZOOM.
-- shortcut - the longest distance between two points.
The implications this will have on pr0n. The $ shot baby!!!
Come on. "true zoom" requires data that simply isn't there in a TV signal.
Sure, an HD signal can be zoomed and interpolated to some extent, but call it "creation" or not, there is only so much info that can be "guessed".
This is kind of a cool feature, for various reasons. I think some of the most obvious uses that come to mind (besides naughty zoom-ins,) include sports events (hey, that WAS on the line,) and anything where you might be trying to get a particular detail out of a scene. (Such as, in "The Fellowship of the Ring," there's a truck driving around in background during one scene.)
And before it gets said, I know that has been removed. Its just an example.
Sony must have taken the technology from the movies/cop shows where they get grany black and white vision from a crappy camera and can suddnely sit in front of a magic computer and zoom in to see the color of the cotton of criminals top shirt button?
This truly is the best of all possible worlds.
Please, there's only so much you can do with "digital enhancement". If you don't have the bits of resolution in the first place, I don't care what technology you are using, you're not going to create something from nothing.
Where was this when Janet's nip-slip happened? :P
Thats nice and all, but I'll holdout for built in photochopping tools.
SCO (noun.)- A Slimy Corporate Ogre. Often seeks free money.
"Digitally enhancing"- hmm... that seems like it would still degrade the picture quality somewhat. Whenever you extrapolate image data it should reduce the acuracy of the image.
my 4 year old dvd player has 16x zoom. big deal. used it once.
for those of u wondering which one of Sony's model would come out with this technology.. its SONY WEGA series.. check out the official press release
fifteen jugglers, five believers
There's already at least 12 algorithms around for scaling up an image:
e si zer.html
http://www.digitalanarchy.com/toolbox/toolbox_r
I'm guessing that Sony have simply come up with another one. Regardless of what they claim, you can't "zoom in" on an image with a fixed resolution, you're always going to be using some type of interpolation and this will introduce digital artefacts.
Putting syrup in coffee is some form of blasphemy.
It's just regular digital zoom via interpolation. You can't just "zoom" in on something if there is no more data to zoom into! It would only be possible if the current picture was merely part of a higher resolution picture, hence more data to see.
Though it's easy enough to decry digital zoom as a gimmick, and in most cases it probably is, there are some (admittedly, highly specialized) implementations that produce really great results. Look at HQ4x ( http://www.hiend3d.com/hq4x.html )and its associated projects. It's primarily for images which don't breach 256 colors, of course, and it works best on simple shapes, but it's realtime, and it looks fantastic.
It operates via voice commands and goes CLICK-CLICK-CLICK when it's zooming?
Stop thinking of pr0n for a second, as difficult as that may be for some, and try to think of another good use for this: sports. A particularly tricky off-side situation in a football match (alright, soccer...) or tennis or whatever. Then again, what am I saying - this is cool simply because it exists.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- G.B. Shaw
oops, stupid space bar. Correct link is: http://www.digitalanarchy.com/toolbox/toolbox_resi zer.html
Putting syrup in coffee is some form of blasphemy.
Hmmm, I'll have to try that one with my girlfriend when she catches me watching the pr0n...
...but honey! They just digitally enhanced the signal to communicate gloss, depth and texture...i'm just evaluating this in the name of technology! Honest!
It's not zoom, it's digital enhancement. Which is what zoom is. But this is different. Yeah, right.
More marketing BS.
I can only think of one genre of movies that this would be used for...
Remember Deckard's Sony photo machine?
It's like that?
Unlike the current TVs that simply scale the image, Sony's technology does 'true' zooming by digitally enhancing the signal to communicate gloss, depth and texture.
READ: Zooms image and antialiases the hell out of it. Same effect as crossing your eyes and sticking your nose to the screen, but now available from the remote control!
Click here for a free picture of an iPod!
...Sci-fi's that use arbitrary plot fixes on photos that lack the resolution they need by using a computer to "zoom in and enhance" the image. Sometimes it's so ridiculous that I wanna belch. The only way this could truely be accurate is if the TV signal carries more data (for example, zooming on a 1080i HD signal). But HD has yet to approach critical mass...ugh.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
That pixel! I want to look at THAT PIXEL!
When you zoom in, I wonder if it makes that cool DIT-DIT-DI-DI-di-di-di-di-di- sound effect?
You are not creating data out of thin air... it is being created based on preexisting data, by an (usually) expertly designed procedure. As to whether or not it is meaningful in the long run, I can attest to the meaningfulness of almost all still images and moving images (how about DVD's played at any high desktop resolution) that I have seen expanded.
I'm not sure if they're the same model they talk about in the article but the ads for the latest Sony models here in Japan mention a memory stick port in front of the TV that lets you record programs that let you watch them on your cellphone for instance.
You can bet they record it in some crippled format (don't expect it to be XVid), but it's cool feature to watch stuff in the train anyway (Japanese usually have very long commute times, unlike US'ers).
"Naughty, naughty, naughty, you filthy old soomka !"
If Sony were smart, they'd hire the X10 guys to do the advertising for this zoom feature!!
It doesn't matter how many experts worked on the filter, the output *can't* have more information in it than the input. Either the zoom image conveys the same information that was in the un-zoomed image, or they're making stuff up to fill in the gaps.
Wait a minute... What's that?
Television, enhance image! Enhance. Enhance.
My God.
Don't you know, the highly advanced Japanese TV broadcasting system already telecasts at a very high resolution, one that is dependent upon cultural, economic, and nerd factors:
TV Resolution = [1920 1440] * Dollar/Yen*100 * Import Racers (in the US)/Stock Car Racers (in Japan) * # of (PS2+GC)/Xboxes sold globally
So you see, unless Bill Gates really improves his image in the streets of Shinjuku, or a NASCAR Japan series takes off in Japan, there's plenty of resolution for their zoom-in technology to use!
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
It uses interpolation rather than just pixel duplication / binning.
I don't know, it's probably just me, but I don't think adding a "feature" like this to a tv set should be a cause for worldwide hype in a normal world.
:P are (I hope) probably not targeted to people who understand the techniques laying behind.
:D
I mean zooming an image is no rocket science (and in this case is probably no good either). Recognizing public demand for such a function in the case of tv's and adding it could be good for businness. But hyping such a function this much... it's just a nobrainer.
But then again, the hype around these new functions and revolutionary enhancements
One thing to add from the image procssing guy's side: for normal pal-resolution tv sets a certain amount of everyday zooming wouldn't show that much zooming error as e.g. a plasma screen would. Just try grabbing a lowres low-bitrate video (lets say quarter pal res + ~500kbit mpeg4) and play it full screen on a 50cm tv set (many artifacts are smoothed out) and some 100cm digital (where they all remain visible).
But I still don't like the hype around it. It's like when MS said DB-based file system is coming in '06 and that will be so great and cool and all. When we first heard them we just looked at each other and wondered: with all their research facilities behind their backs, how come in some cases they all lurk so behind ? Another example would be using neural networks for learning and adapting applications. Anybody moving around in scientific research can come around many dozens of applications and research fields using them every year. Still, most of everyday people don't have a clue what that is and they all get easily caught into the hype tides.
Well, scientific research and company policies are not so close to each other as one would guess
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
It's superresolution!
There's actually a whole host of algorithms that go well beyond the junk they throw at us for "digital zoom". The two most applicable algorithms for this particular problem -- increasing the resolution of video above and beyond the source data available in a particular frame -- are temporal integration (collecting data across multiple frames) and superresolution by example (automatically associating and recalling high resolution imagery when a low resolution equivalent is shown). Some example code:
Temporal Integration: ALE
Superresolution by Example: Image Analogies -- not automated, but remains one of the cooler pieces of code ever shown at SIGGRAPH.
From the article, I'm guessing it's another ALE style stacker. They probably needed to write one for their cameras anyway.
--Dan
JM
Oink, Oink!!
you gotta love any article where the word True is in quotes.
vk.
The thing with pyramid schemes is that some people do win out. As the scheme progresses, the number of people profiting will be a small portion of the actual participants
Another method to show Comcast exactly how CRAPPY their cable TV really is. I'm glad I switched to satellite. It's so much better.
Who needs this stuff? I have these features on a couple DVD players, and I've never used it. Pause, stop, fast forward. That's it. Tell Sony to put a fast forward (through commercials), and then I'll be interested.
-- No sig for you!
Using heuristics to assume material and interpolate between known data does not a true zoom make.
I don't see any (ahem) reason to use this feature. The killer app for resolution-upsampling, or whatever, is front-projection TVs! Instead of optically zooming up your image to full wall-size, complete with pixels larger than lego bricks, use this technology to zoom the signal up to the native resolution of a hi-res LCD projector. (or highest res available if its a CRT)
"I forgot my mantra."
This may be useful for helping (pardon the pun) smooth the transition to HDTV. Right now most of our cable channels are not HD, and the difference between the HD and regular digital TV channels is quite stark. On a large screen, regular digtal TV becomes almost unbearable once you get used to HD. But more importantly, perhaps many people are uninterested in buying an HDTV because they know how little content is available and realize that most TV is going to look just as crappy anyway. This could be a good marketing point for Sony- a processor that helps non-HD TV look better on your big-screen TV.
Isn't this the sort of thing that causes nightmares in the minds of TV show makeup persons? I know HDTV caused many a sleepless night, but seriously... Maybe next they'll implement real-time airbrushing and iBotox.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
This is blatent marketing spiel. It's not scaling because it "enhances" the picture? Give me a break. Applying a few algorithms doesn't change the fact that the picture is scaled.
And since when did slashdot start accepting ads as stories?
With all the high resolution HDTVs out there why doesn't Sony just "zoom" all standard definition content so that it can display pixel for pixel on an HDTV? If the hype is real it would seem like an obvious application.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Either that or they should call this technology for what it really is: Digital Zoom-Zoom
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
I'd mod you up if I still had mod points. When I first saw this, I was wondering how it was different from simply interpolating the pixels of the image. But I think you're right in that it must be superresolution; I'd thought about applying that technique to video before.
Once you've figured out the registration or spatial offset between each frame, it's pretty much just a matter of applying a reconstruction filter to the samples from all of the images adjusted for position to get back a better approximation to the original signal.
I believe it was NASA who originally developped the superresolution techniques to refine the fairly low resolution images they got back from early probes.
Ah yes... I think this is one of those applications where multi-rate filtering is useful for something other than filling journals. (right?)
By taking into account the response of block DCT algorithms in the motion comp/optical blur removal steps, you can take full advantage of the entire system's response and extract even more accurate spatial domain information.
I wonder what specifically Sony models and how they adjust their models for varying input sources...
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Will it find guns if you zoom in on the shadows?
Why is this news? This is marketing garbage. It's still digital zoom. Worthless for television.
It doesn't include a truncated sinc function or polyphase filter (as far as I could tell)... what's the point? I mean, we already know how to "do it right".
What you really need is an MPEG/JPEG deblocker, THEN you resize the image. Duurrrr.
I mean, I'd pay $180 if it took the EXIF information from the picture, derived information about the CCD layout and lens/aperature settings, and information about the artifacts introduced by the particular quanitization that occured during JPEG compression -- to create a reconstruction filter that could then be combined with the resizing filter above to allow for adding back in detail in the resized image.
Now that'd be a fucking cool plugin.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
All you ever see there is bicubic interpolation which they teach you how to do in the first few weeks of any computational mathematics class. No smoke, no mirrors, no nothing. Just a stupid-simple interpolation algorithm.
NASA introduced a system called VISAR that has similar image extrapolation capabilities. It's secret is that it's examining hints from the frame you're stopped on as well as the ones before and after it. It also can remove zooms and stabilize shaky images in post-production. Also, there's a system called Retinex that they created with other image processing capabilities.
I don't think this is mere trollism on Sony's part, but just an implementation of what others have done.
I remember seeing a demonstration about 12 years ago where Prof Barnsley showed how his fractal compression method could take a low resolution image (in this case a parrot) and encode it as a fractal. He showed how simply zooming the original resulted in the usual blocky image but when you zoomed the encoded image it still appeared sharp(ish). He zoomed into the parrot's eye which in the original was made up of four pixels and the fractal image still showed a round pupil although it did look a bit out of focus.
Another demo I saw on the British show "Tomorrow's World" showed how you could zoom in on a photo that had a fence and the fractal image showed the fence details that were again not visible in the original.
There was of course talk of using this sort of tech to do video upsampling for projection. Given the performance I saw I see no reason why a standard DVD couldn't have been cranked up to twice the resolution and look substantially clearer. Of course, the downside of fractal compression was that it took huge (at the time) amounts of computing power to compress, and bugger all the uncompress. These days I expect it is trivial.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Nice thing.... but since I don't remember one single moment where I actually said "Gee, wouldn't a zoom button be nice right now?" I'm asking myself how much I will have to spend on future TVs. And I'm not talking cash here... Those features alone don't make the price. But what I'm talking about is zapping through all the functions of those home entertainment monsters. When I was in school I had the time to try out every simple function in every single electronic device in our home. But today, where time is worth more than money, I won't use such gimmicks anyway. It's the same with my wireless ISDN phone, with my car hifi and so on. I mainly use the main functions and that's it. Heck I can't even use the sleep timer on my TV because I won't fall asleep before the TV shuts off anyway. So I'm asing myself when do we get price reduction by leaving out certain functions in our electronic devices? No zoom? No problem, take 20 bucks off the price. That would be cool. (Of course there will be a lot of self-kicking when you take it home turn it on and see just the scene you'd have liked to get a zoomed and frozen image of ;))
Except the sticking the photo into the scanner part.
Dude! Where's my car?!?!?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
could it be some sort of fractal expansion? Probably too cpu intensive. eg... http://www.lizardtech.com/solutions/gf/
Not a sentence!
Kind of like real life, no? As time progresses, a small number of people at the top will be profiting, but the masses will be fairly poor.
On that HDTV set...
Blogging because I can...
As anyone dabbling in image processing knows. Given any image information, you cannot add entropy to an image with certainty that it is correct.
However they label thier zooming, if they are introducing information into the image then you have a false image.
However, like the DivX 'warmth' plugin, randomised information can give us perceptual detail that is interpretted by our visual system to 'look right'
Otherwise all are doing is zooming with subpixel antialiasing.
In this day and age I think the signal is digital, so how is any modification of the original signal enhancing?
Now enhancing is a very broad word, but to me this article is a marketting trip to consumer land, nothing new here, move along.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
I mean think: MPEG compression works by looking for similarities and differences inter-frame. The same could theoritically be applied to zoom. Have a zoom look X frames ahead and behind and use information from the other frames to guess more accurately at the missing data in the current frame.
However even just a simple bicubic filter works pretty well, and works on all images. It looks much better than just making the pixels larger, and at up to about 200% isn't all that noticable and is even acceptable at 400% or so.
Broadcast = professional grade = expensive (for many reasons). $4000 will get you a real, no shit, 1920x1080 big screen HDTV. It really has 1920 horizontal resolution, and it's big enough you can really see it.
For that matter $500 will get you a 22" computer monitor that will do 2048x1536 and will easily pull 1920x1280, even at a high refresh. It's not all that large, but it is beyond what HDTV needs by far.
Welcome BladeRunner
(prolly the first movie to use this function as a home appliance) (did i write appliance correctly mamma ?)
i'm waiting for the day we can perform 3d rotations around the scene inside the television. Upskirts in japan will take on a whole new meaning.. heck it could even put the voyeur industry out of business
Sony is now already working on a new invention: zooming-out. It enables the tv set to digitally extrapolate the scene outside its borders.
A typical resolution image coming off of a digital camera only prints at maybe 2 or 3 inches across at the resolution a typical (inkjet) printer operates.
Not true, because inkjet "resolutions" are really dot densities and not resolution (resolution would be how many distinct dots can you print per inch.) That's why laser printers with nominally "lower resolution" output crisper text. Also the dot density is for a single colour - complex hues such as skin tones have to be simulated by digital halftoning (essentially multiple dots forming larger colour pixels) techniques which reduce the effective resolution several fold depending on the colour being simulated and the accuracy desired. That's why continous tone printers such as dye subs with nominally "lower resolution" can give much sharper colour prints.
Software would have a major effect on the quality of colour prints from inkjets but that would mostly be from how the halftoning was done rather than the interpolation per se...
The box goes on the tv. So you have to get up, walk across the room and sit half an inch off the tv anyway. Of course things are gonna get bigger!
Get paid to search..It's geniune and
Sony Develops TVs That Zoom in for True Close-ups
No, they've developed a new version of a chip.
They don't even know when they'll start developing "TVs that zoom in for true close-ups".
Unlike the current TVs that simply scale the image, Sony's technology does 'true' zooming by digitally enhancing the signal to communicate gloss, depth and texture.
Using which definition of "true"?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Just 'cause your moms female and nice to you, does'nt mean its cool to refer to her as your "Girlfriend".
Never mind the zoom in, I'd rather have a zoom out.
Like, for example, when they show a nude girl only from the neck upwards.
1/ original video signal is sent using FIF (Fractal Image Format) compression, high qaulity zoom possible, by definition much of the original signal is dropped during "normal" playback.
2/ original video signal is sent using much higher resolution, high quality zoom for a couple of steps possible, by definition much of the original signal is dropped during normal playback
3/ original video signal is send using display resolution, iterpolation of several frames used to generate extra data, modest zoom possible but should be noted that unlike the previous two zoom techniques this one is fake and picture displayed will NOT be based solely upon the data stream.
4/ original video signal is sent using display resolution, single frame of data used, modest zoom possible and using something like GPU anti-aliasing to smooth out the jaggies, this again unlike items 1 and 2 is a fake zoom.
Basically that's it, unless the broadcast signal is transmitting something like 24 x the amount of data that the display is using in standard mode (so wasteful no commercial enterprise will go for it, juts look at the dynamic compression satellite broadcasters use to squeeze more channels into limited satellite bandwidth) then this "zoom" is about as factual as the 9600 d.p.i. 25 dollar A4 scanners that are really 300x600 d.p.i.
SO in reality this is the same tech that already exists in my 50 dollar standalone dvd player, or indeed dvd playback software for the pc.
What it most certainly is NOT is a Blade Runner style photographic zoom and enhance where 4 pixels end up generating an image showing a reflection of the cameraman thus proving the photo was a fake and the chick was a construct.
How this sort of shit can get posted to a self proclaimed "news for nerds" site beggars belief.
Did IQ's suddenly drop by about 50 around here?
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
I guess we can see a lot more in detail when we analyze the original footage of say the Genesis-drop of yesterday using ALE.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
...and digital PVRs simply record the exact MPEG2 stream sent from the TV station, no additional processing is involved. And at high bitrates you would be hard pushed to identify MPEG2 artifacts in any case (try zooming on on a well authored DVD and identify the artifacts).
This argument about "lossy compression" comes up again and again. You could say that everything is "compressed" from the original reality; it's a matter of whether you do stupid compression (drop the sampling rate) or intelligent compression (removing things that can't be heard/seen). It's all about getting the maximum perceived audo/picture quality with a given data rate. So, taking the same data rate, would you prefer "uncompressed" 8-bit video at 320x240 say, or MPEG4 "compressed" HDTV at 1920x1080?
I remember reading an article that flies can actually see better than their multi-faceted eyes would theoretically permit, because of a similar effect. They take time into account and interpollate in the time-space domain.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
oh.. i can see it now.. you take an image and blur it up until it is just one uniform colour..
then from this image you can "extrapolate" it to get the original image!
100kb image today -> 1kb image in the future!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Assuming it works perfectly, what this system has to do is make an artificially-intelligent guess as to what the low-resolution picture is showing, synthesize a high-res version of its guess, and show you that. Your brain can do the same thing, but you're aware of some effort and stress in the process (and you're also aware of uncertainty).
What will happen when you know that a friend of yours is sitting in the stadium at a football game that you're watching at home and you zoom in on a couple of pinkish pixels that represent the place where you know he is sitting? Whose face will it display when you zoom in? A generic anime-like face? Your friend's face? What?
When it guesses wrong, the mistakes it makes will be dillies.
The article said it showed that a dark spot in the river was a hippopotamus. How did it know? Did it have a database that said "this film takes place in a locale where dark spots in the river are probably hippopotami?" Or when you zoom in on dark spots in other bodies of water, will it deduce and render a hippopotamus, too? Hippopotami in the Okeefenokee swamp? In the Hudson river? In Walden Pond?
As with colorized films, the effect will be exciting for about a week. Then your brain will catch on that it is being cheated, and the zoomed in images will look clear and sharp yet, subtlely, unsatisfying, because it is showing only what the brain already knows is there... or fake, stereotyped detail that will look phony once you catch on to its characteristic "look." Finally, the only fun in the system will be deliberately zooming in on things you know it will make mistakes on to see the comic effect.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
This is ~30 frames per second enhancement. Think of it this way you have ~30 frames of data for each second. They may be using the informational differences between each frame to build the image.
They may also be able to associate a now low resolution spot in the current frame with the large high resolution image x number of frames ago.
Get a free ipod.
Oh yeah baby, look at the stripes on that zebra's ass! Woohoo!
Cool tech and all that, but I found the picture on the link to be especially amusing.
Maybe it's just me, hmm.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
"My that zebra has a nice rear, care for a closer look?"
Come on...... You know what this will be used for. Getting a close up or them sneak peaks you get on TV. I would of loved to have that yesterday. On Yes Dear the main female lead was popping out all over the place. Id would of froze n zoomed on a few key scenes. Then hit [Prt Scr]
...May/Walsh were on my screen bouncing around in the sand just a week or so ago. Now this wonderful technology will have to wait 4 years to realize its glory.
Hollywood generally doesn't like when end-users prefer edited content.
5 -0 5-clearplay-main_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2004-0
I can easily imagine a director complaining that allowing the user to zoom a movie would change his picture and ruin the film.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Doesn't the brain do this to some extent?
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
Sure you can (or can't depending on which of the previous posts you agree with) do it, but why? In all my years of watching T.V. I have never once said "man, I wish I could zoom in on that!" Can anyone give an example as to how this technology might be usefull?
--I'm not talking about dance lessons. I'm talking about putting a brick through the other guy's windshield.-
When the automated bread slicer was revealed to the world (I want to say World's Fair 1912ish maybe?) people were amazed. By the time it was ready for sale by about the 30s it could slice and package bread for sale.
It's the bread slicer that allowed commercial bakers to make it into big business.
Never confuse volume with power.
There goes my excuse to yell at the TV whenever Captain Picard says "magnify and enhance"!
I wish that my inferiority complex were as good as yours.
-RenderHead
I have a Sony TV that has DRCv1. It was claimed as some sort of motion-blur removing feature, in the end all it does is sharpen the image. Yeah, there's probably more advanced stuff going on there, but it has no effect on motion blur at all, the overall effect it's just sharper, which isn't always a good thing.
Still, I like to run it on "low" (Options are "Off", "Low", and "High")
No one ever knows the answer to that one...
Does this mean you can teach photoshop (or whichever app) how to clean up noise from your digital camera? Is this being done already?
We can find Waldo.
This is barely news, its really just yet another image enhancement algorithm that tries to make something out of nothing, unless they are doing something very new and innovative (unlikely) its not going to be much better than anything else. Also isnt it the directors job to make sure that you see in detail everything you need to see? thats what real close-ups and long-shots are for - so you can sit down and just watch the show!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Didya notice the pic in the article? You'd think for a promo they could have picked something better than a zebra's butt.
This is a technology we really need. Even tighter zoom on Ron Jeremy's hairy butt. Yeah, that's great.
I remember reading a post on /. a while back explaining precisely how to do this.
I'm not a P'shop expert, but as far as I remember it involved taking a long, long shot with the lens cap on, in order to create a image file that should be totally black but for the dodgy pixels on your camera's CCD, and then subtacting this image from any subsequent ones taken with that camera. It was something like that, anyway.
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
There are other packages out there, as well, like Intellisharpen
Again, not that these things are killer apps for Digital Zoom as opposed to optical, buth they are damned good.
To get the best zoom effect, you want to use bandwidth selectively.
* Preview the feed to a sample audience before general broadcast (e.g. a few seconds before) and record where they look.
* Or train an AI to mimic the sample audience.
* Or predict the most zoomable point by context (e.g. in most sports it will be the area around the ball, in pr0n it will be where you'd expect). Use image recognition, or pay someone to follow that point.
Maybe I'm too late, but let's hope that publishing this stops another "bleeding obvious" patent.
And at high bitrates you would be hard pushed to identify MPEG2 artifacts in any case (try zooming on on a well authored DVD and identify the artifacts).
DVD Video on a Superbit disc runs at up to 9 Mbps for video+audio. Standard definition DTV runs at less than half that.
Since pornography historically has subsidized the adoption of many new technologies and format standards, we can therefore deduce that this new technology will quickly become a standard feature in all homes (give it 5 to 10 years).
Probably since World War 2, we've seen the breakdown of the family and close-knit social communities for various reasons. Now we don't socialise with our neighbours and entertain ourselves at home a lot - the Internet, DVD & video, games consoles, etc.
Added to that, communications mean we can avoid face-to-face contact with people. Yet I'm beginning to wonder if we are actually yearning for that lost contact and intimacy with other people?
Look at:
- the rise in reality TV which gives us the chance to look "behind the scenes" in peoples' lives
- the increase in celebrity worship and stalking
- DVDs that offer documentaries and commentaries about movies, not just the movies
- mobile phones with "secret" cameras built in
Now the "TV zoom" will allow us to "tear apart" programs and movies to find something new - perhaps the "little yellow van" in the extreme background of a gladiator movie...
All of these technological "advances" seem to succeed because they give us the feeling of some kind of "voyeuristic intimacy" with a particular subject that gives us the feeling of being "one-up" over the rest of the human race.
As a race, I really believe that humans are reaching a turning-point in their evolution - on one hand, we're instinctively social animals enjoying close contact with others but, on the other hand, we're readily accepting technology that allows us to sit back and "view from a distance", probably because ultimately we're being indoctrinated about how important it is to NOT stand out in a crowd - staying at a distance lets us pretend that much more that we are who we're not, just small insecure people who yearn for contact with others.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The added details may be false in the strict information-theoretic sense, but as you point out, it "looks right" to the untrained eye. Consumer electronics makers make a lot of money from "consumer land".
IMAGINE!!! Porn at it's greatest..
= Grow a brain...
Granted this is off topic, but this looked like a good spot. I recently bought a 32" Sony WEGA and my only complaint is the fact that it can't handle the progressive scan output from my DVD player. The component video inputs only handle 480i. I honestly can't tell the difference between the normal input and the component video input. What's the point of putting component video on a TV if it can't handle 480p?
Brought to you by Team SPAM! where we believe: "Information in the noise!"
isn't that an oxymoron? ;)
I'm currently developing a product that given a standard TV signal, it digitally processes the video and audio to reconstruct the smell originally present during recording. This technology even works for older black and white films.
Imagine, a box on your TV set that allows you to watch all your favorite sitcoms, soaps, sports, pornography and cooking shows as if you were right there in the actor's face, sniffing them.
As you can see, the potential for profit is enormous! If you're interested in investing in my product please mail, in cash, to:
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire