Silicon Optix Reon-VX powers 1080p in Toshiba's HD-XA2 HD DVD player {Engadget HD}

Jan 3rd 2007 5:14PM It has nothing to do with cleaning up a signal. In fact the disk should already be "cleaned up" as you put it, we're not talking about an analog source, or an analog output or even an analog television. Sending the exact signal would be ideal.

The issue is that the new "next gen" dvd formats support overlays. So what happens is that things like menus, chapters, timelines, picture in picture needs to be rendered on top of the movie and then shown on the TV. The processing which occurs to add these elements to the signal is occuring on an interlaced picture (the components to do it on a 1080p24 signal are still too expensive (I suppose). Therefore they need a chip like this to convert the updated picture from the modified 1080i60 into the 1080p60 output.

It is unfortunate that typically all you want to do is just watch the movie which would be a straight transfer, but they do need to support all of the advanced features.