A select few individuals were invited to Pioneer's R&D facility within its Kawasaki HQ in Japan recently, to witness the future of the AV company's Kuro TV range.
Home Cinema Choice magazine was invited along, and has revealed all about Fuga, the codename for the latest Kuro picture processing tech.
Improving low-quality video
Speaking about the video demonstration, Tatsuya Sugimoto, from Pioneer's Display Product Planning Division, explained to HCC: "Our new technology has been designed to massively improve the smoothness of lower-quality video. While high-grade images pass through the circuit untouched, low-grade video is significantly enhanced."
This points to a similar thing that Toshiba is doing with its Regza range of TVs, which upscale standard-def images to near-HD quality.
Steve May, Senior Editor of Home Cinema Choice, was impressed with what he saw, saying: "Demonstrations were predictably dramatic, and bode well for enhancing the picture performance of standard definition sources."
Behind the new processing tech is Fuga, a replacement vibrancy circuit for Pioneer's current processing chip, PureDrive.
Depth of field
Video upscaling isn't the only new technology that Pioneer is working on. The company's next-gen TVs may also have the power to change depth of field within an image.
This is all down to the Fuga analyser – which scans images in real-time, and makes any necessary changes to an image, much like the way you change the aperture of a camera to add image depth.
May isn't quite convinced about how this technology will work in the home but was still impressed, explaining: "It remains to be seen quite what form this feature eventually comes to market in, but it stands as an astonishing example of the power within Pioneer's next generation silicon."
To read more world-exclusive info about Fuga and Pioneer's new Kuro TVs, point your browser to www.homecinemachoice.com.
