Let It Wave's bandlet upconversion technology on the air in France
by Richard Lawler 
posted Nov 14th 2006 at 2:49PM
Let It Wave's bandlet upconversion technology is on the air on a French high definition TV station broadcasting the French Roland Garros Tennis open. The CTO of France Televisions Interactive states the company is using the technology to mix upconverted SD sources with native HDTV footage, enabling high definition programming to reach customers sooner. We haven't had the best experiences with mixed SD content at US sporting events like the PGA Championship, but Let It Wave claims its technology upconverts as high as 1080p with no flickering or jaggies. French television is currently testing the technology on Altera FPGA-based hardware and will continue to do so for the next three months with a variety of sources, the company plans to announce more products at NAB 2007.
Filed under: Other hardware, OTA
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
NNTPgrip @ Nov 14th 2006 4:54PM
Appreciate the followup on this tech. Definitely want to see this integrated into everything it can. I personally won't even think about buying a standalone scaler until it has this in it. (and an auto audio sync through HDMI or optical/coax for what I am sure will be a substantial delay for processing-I mean its partially vectorizing then re-rasterizing the image based on the render)
Andy @ Nov 14th 2006 4:57PM
My upconversion technique I programmed for images so far for me, has proved to be of higher quality than any of these. The only problem with mine is that I don't know advanced programming languages, so it only works well with images right now, as it takes a long time to render, and would need to be programmed with Directx or something, or into hardware to be able to do video.
earthling @ Nov 15th 2006 7:37AM
Andy email me: I will convert your algorithm for you :) e a r th ling at 2connected dot org
The let it wave technology is the best I have seen so far, it is head and shoulders above faroudja, genesis, etc.. they even have a huge endorsement from Faroudja in thier booth! The probelm is that the company is so protective of their technology that they refuse to sell it to anyone in any other package than an expensive FPGA so don't expect to see this in any consumer goods any time soon.
mroach @ Nov 14th 2006 6:40PM
France has the advantage of upconverting from SECAM, which is quite a bit nicer than NTSC. I'm sure it looks great. Watching PAL and SECAM source on my HDTV look so much better than NTSC. Most PAL brodcasts in Europe are widescreen and they're 576 lines, where as NTSC is a mere 480, so when upconverting to 720 or 1080, you're don't have as far to go.