Toshiba's new ZF LCDs include Cell-based Resolution+ upscaling

by Paul Miller, posted Aug 28th 2008 at 6:33AM

As expected, Toshiba is offering a new (supposed) world's first here at IFA: a true upscaling TV, finally getting rid of the middle man for upconverting those SD sources. The new ZF Series LCDs include Cell processors and Toshiba's home grown Resolution+ technology, which does similar edge and detail enhancement to Toshiba's XDE upscaler -- sharpening detail, smoothing edges, and leaving the rest of the image alone -- but with the added fun of Cell power in the mix. As for the actual displays, Toshiba will be shipping the 40ZF575D (40-inch) and the 46ZF575D (46-inch), both offering 1080p, 30,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 6ms response times and Active Vision M100 HD 100Hz 5:5 pulldown processing, along with four HDMI plugs, component video, RGB and PC input. Right now this is just a Europe launch, and we don't have exact ship dates or pricing, but hopefully Toshiba will soon rectify that.

Gallery: Toshiba's new ZF LCDs include Cell-based Resolution+ upscaling

Filed under: Displays, Toshiba, LCD

Tags: cell, lcd, resolution, toshiba, upscaling, zf, zf575d

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Highest Ranked

DVD4ME @ Aug 28th 2008 7:03AM

Damn it, bring back Nfinity, he was born for this story!

Neutral

Mark @ Aug 28th 2008 7:21AM

Putting an expensive processing chip in a high end TV makes a lot more sense than sticking it in a DVD player. Apparantly Toshiba agree because the XDE player doesn't even use a cell - it uses a Zoran chipset. That might explain why the reaction from owners has been fairly lukewarm so far.

Highly Ranked

DVD4ME @ Aug 28th 2008 7:57AM

Lukewarm? - 4.5 out of 5 on Amazon!

Low Ranked

Mark @ Aug 28th 2008 8:35AM

Yes lukewarm. Go and look at the owners thread on AVS forum. Some people like it, others describe it as a mixed bag or that it has only a marginal or slight effect on PQ. Some say its close enough and better value than an Oppo. Others say its much more expensive than other upscalers which may even use the same chipset. The overall consensus is its a good player with good upscaling capabilities but no BD killer.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1058997

Neutral

Joseph @ Aug 28th 2008 9:35AM

I hope that you don't believe everything that you read at AVS.

Neutral

Mark @ Aug 28th 2008 9:29AM

@Joseph, I judge things on their merits. In this instance the thread has discussions over 8 pages including a good number of well informed people who actually own the player. Why shouldn't I take their opinion into account? As I said the reaction was overall lukewarm. Some people liked it but even amongst those nobody was raving it about it or attributing miraculous advances in picture quality or claiming the PQ matched HD. It's just a good upscaling player and the discussion seemed more centred around whether it matched an Oppo or not and what chipset was in it.

Highly Ranked

Gus @ Aug 28th 2008 7:59PM

I've read all those AVS comments, there are some very glowing and positive reports and a couple of negative ones as you would expect at AVS.It's like the format war all over again, whatever side can tell the most lies wins, anyone with any intelligence needs to take all those comments with a grain of salt.
If you want a DVD player, it appears it is an excellent product, if you want HD get BR, end of story.

Neutral

Deadmeat @ Aug 28th 2008 10:25AM

This is Super Upconversion, not XDE. In other word, 960p native from DVD and SD cable.

Neutral

squiggleslash @ Aug 28th 2008 10:58AM

Whether it's SuperUpconversion or not, "native" 960p out of 480i is not physically possible. They can do some remarkable stuff with upconversion, and some DVDs in particular support standards that makes the disks lend themselves to upconversion, but it's incorrect to refer to the processed result as "native" 960p in any way. What makes a feed 480i is that the rest of the data isn't there.

I'm surprised none of the Blutards have chimed in yet with a complaint about Toshiba's lack of a player for their flailing standard, like they did with the DVD player thing the other day.

Neutral

Dave @ Aug 28th 2008 8:28PM

I'm certainly no tech head, but I don't understand how this can work at the TV end of things.

If this super upconvert process has to evaluate 9 frames to create the 960p, wouldn't that have to be done inside the player before being passed to the TV?
If it is just analyzing a signal at the TV, surely all that can happen is sharpening and cleaning a 480i signal?? Am I wrong??

Neutral

Deadmeat @ Aug 28th 2008 11:56AM

> Whether it's SuperUpconversion or not, "native" 960p out of 480i is not physically possible.

Tell that to NASA and CIA, which have been doing the physically impossible for decades.

> but it's incorrect to refer to the processed result as "native" 960p in any way.

Output of Super Upconversion is 960p native. This technology works by computationally fusing 9 adjacent SD frames to computationally recreate single 960p HD frame. The processor power to do this inexpensively wasn't available to CE domain until now, so the US military and government agencies were primary users of this tech.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20080114/dg96_14.jpg

Neutral

squiggleslash @ Aug 28th 2008 12:48PM

Yes, we're aware of how it works, but it's still not "native" 960p. The data is thrown away during the conversion to 480i, blurred further due to compression, and as a result attempts to extract more data than was there originally are limited to guess work based upon clues from surrounding frames. I'm not saying it doesn't look good, but "native" 960p it aint.

As for the evil government agencies comment: You do realize those NCIS shows where Abby "enhances" a blurry CCTV picture to identify the terrorists are, actually, fictional? The picture you show is very good, but it's also meaningless. It's an edge-sharpened picture, I'm not seeing more detail, just better contrasts due to an intelligent sharpening algorithm. If you really think it's showing more detail, try reading the smaller text on the label on the bottle. There's nothing I can't read on the left that I can on the right, and if I enhance the contrast on the left, they're about equal in readability.

There's no additional information, it's just a smart sharpening algorithm.

Neutral

DrXym @ Aug 28th 2008 5:05PM

Deadmeat, super upconversion cannot magic information which has been lost out of thin air. At its most basic, a 2x2 block can track a black dot much better than a 1x1 block. It might be able infer some detail given two similar frames of reference but it won't be comparable to HD and it will be extremely dependent on the source material whether it does anything at all. Fast moving scenes or scenes where there is too much noise or not enough jitter or too much compression, or even interlacing may fall back on regular interpolation. Super resolution tools already exist for video and the results are pretty uninspiring. Go and try out video enhancer if you don't believe me.

As for NASA... well they have the benefit of a largely static photographic subject, hundreds of camera shots and vast banks of super computers to stitch pictures together in non-realtime. Advantages which a TV does not have. If you're expecting a miracle from your TV you will be sorely disappointed. At best it will be a nice to have feature, one which might look yield some improvement for some movies and do nothing at all for others. I certainly question why anyone would be buying a top of the line HD TV just to avoid feeding it true HD content.

Highly Ranked

Gus @ Aug 28th 2008 8:16PM

Regardless of what is or isn't, I can't wait to see the reviews for this baby from people with balanced views and not hidden agendas as permeate these sites, it will be very interesting to see once and for all what this can or cant do and whether there may be, albeit small, a legitimate challenge to blu ray or not........., I love these Sony-Tosh battles, bring it on!

Neutral

engage @ Aug 28th 2008 3:56PM

This sounds intriguing, but I thought 5:5 pulldown could only be done at 120 Hz (24 x 5). Shouldn't they be advertising this as 4:4 instead, since
the math checks out properly?

Also, I take it the additional processing is disabled when the set recieves a true hi-def signal from either cable, consoles, or optical media. Too bad,
because we all know which of these needs the most help acheiving a top-notch picture due to signal compression (eyez on U, cable).

Neutral

chuckdaly @ Aug 28th 2008 6:48PM

First off, There are no firsts going on here. Every flat panel display made within the last 7 years includes an internal scaler. All flat panel displays take any incoming signal that is not at the panel's native resolution and scales it to that resolution. Outside of a few oddball pieces such as Oppo's players, sub $300 upscaling DVD players do a far worse job of upconverting 480i DVD images than the internal scalers built into flat panel HDTVs. If you don't believe me, compare with a HQV benchmark DVD.

Upconverting DVDs was a successful marketing ploy to convince consumers that they needed to purchase a new DVD player, even when their current one was fine. Heck, even Engadget HD fell for it.

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