NEC ASSP reduces blurring that occurs when low-resolution images are expanded and displayed in high-resolution

NEC Electronics today introduced a new application-specific standard product (ASSP) to address the dramatic divergence between yesterday’s image resolution and the high resolution of today’s audio-visual (AV) display systems. Based on NEC’s unique single-frame super-resolution technology, the small, low-power ASSP reduces the blurring that occurs when low-resolution images are expanded and displayed in high-resolution. The ASSP sharpens out-of-focus images, smoothes rough edges and refines contours by analyzing and processing information contained in one frame of data in real time. Using standard video interfaces for data input and output, designers can easily integrate the ASSP into a wide variety of consumer, industrial, medical and automotive devices that handle images and video.

The technology achieves crisp images in 1920 x 1080-pixel high-definition (HD) television broadcasts by boosting image data in the 640 x 480-pixel VGA format ordinarily used for TV broadcasts and DVD storage to 6x the resolution. With standard video interfaces such as 24-bit CMOS I/O with RGB or YUV for easy connection, the super-resolution ASSP easily can be added to existing designs. By 2010 NEC expects to receive orders totaling more than US$110 million for super-resolution products.