High-definition video is a wonderful thing. Who couldn’t love the beautiful picture and digital surround sound? Who wouldn’t trade their old 27' or 32' CRT for a beautiful new HDTV? It´s time to say goodbye to low resolution and image speckles from poor-quality NTSC signals once and for all. Get that pristine HD image and life will be great, right?

Not so fast. Sure, you can now view HD signals, and they look really great. But what happens when you feel like watching one of your favorite old TV shows that isn’t in HD? All that noise and garbage in the image is not gone; instead, it´s accentuated! Many people are shocked to see that the picture on their new HDTV looks worse than their old TV when watching their favorite shows!

In contrast to conventional CRT televisions, fixed-pixel displays dominate today’s home theater marketplace, from single-chip and three-panel front projectors to large, flat-panel direct-view monitors. There are plenty of acronyms to identify the technologies behind these competing products, including LCD (liquid-crystal display), DLP (Digital Light Processing™), LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon), and PDP (plasma display panel).

Each of these technologies creates electronic images in a different way, but they all share one characteristic: a fixed matrix of imaging pixels. This fixed-pixel structure determines the physical resolution of the display and is typically referred to as the display’s “native resolution.”

In order to convert all incoming video signals to the native resolution of a particular fixed-pixel display, manufacturers must incorporate a video-processing chip inside the display. In addition to scaling the image to fit the native resolution, this video processor is normally designed to enhance the image and remove artifacts caused by the conversion and transmission of video. Surprisingly, the video processor can make a significant difference in overall picture quality, even with true high-definition program content.

Unfortunately, video-processing technology has not kept up with the picture quality of today’s larger and larger HD displays, which magnify the image defects that are caused by poor video processing. And although every high-definition display has a video processor, only the highest-quality processor can retain all of the nuance, detail, and intent of the original source. Since video processors can range from a rudimentary $10 chip used in the lowest-end products to $70,000 refrigerator-sized boxes used in Hollywood production houses, the video processor plays the most significant role in picture quality today.