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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.
If only this was around for a certain Australian beauty queens strut down the catwalk last week. *sigh* Pan Baby!
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.
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.
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".
Yet all DVRs on the market currently use MPEG compression to put more data on the HD at the expense of video quality... so, they're not even storing all the video in that came from the original TV station feed to begin with. I'm not quite sure what Sony's magic tech will do when asked to zoom in on an MPEG artifact...
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.
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?
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.
Remember Deckard's Sony photo machine?
It's like that?
...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???
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
I mean zooming an image is no rocket science
Yeah, its way harder. At least high quality image interpolation is. Theres been decades of research into it and dozens of different methods have been the topic of phd papers. Lots of high end math and very complex algorithms.
Ever printed a photo on an inkjet printer? You're seeing a pretty strenuous use of interpolation algorithms there. A typical resolution image coming off of a digital camera only prints at maybe 2 or 3 inches across at the resolution a typical printer operates. So if say, you want an 8x10, your printing software does some serious interpolating.
And not all printing software is equal, either. The algorithm makes all the difference. Its why you can get a so-so large image out of photoshop's print facilities (that uses bicubic) and a noticably better one from QImage (at the moment, pyramid)
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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.
could it be some sort of fractal expansion? Probably too cpu intensive. eg... http://www.lizardtech.com/solutions/gf/
Not a sentence!
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
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...
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"?
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