Zilog, QD Technology sign video license agreement

Electronic News, August 8, 1994 by Jim DeTar

CAMPBELL, CALIF.--Zilog has licensed video enhancement technology from a Los Gatos, Calif.-based startup called QD Technology and the two companies will jointly develop and market a video enhancement chipset, to be manufactured by Zilog, targeted at the consumer TV set market.

Zilog and QD Technology claim the technology uses advanced digital signal processing techniques to improve the picture quality of a conventional television signal to a quality that approaches high definition TV (HDTV).

Previously marketed for the professional video industry, QD's technology will now be available for the consumer television market. Samples of the Zilog chipset are expected in 1Q95, and volume production is slated for 3Q95, the company said.

"We are all anxiously awaiting the day when we can have HDTV in our homes at a reasonable price," said Ed Sack, Zilog's CEO. "In the meantime, the QD Technology offers improved video on larger screen TVs to enhance the enjoyment of programs where picture quality is an important part of the presentation."

QD Technology converts standard NTSC composite video to near HDTV quality by conditioning incoming signals by using image processing compression to eliminate dot-crawl and cross color to produce a much sharper image. Unlike HDTV, this system does not require a change in broadcast equipment and is available now at what the companies claim is a cost-effective price.

QD Technology and Zilog demonstrated the technology recently on a Texas Instruments-built system at Zilog's "Information Superhighway" display of futuristic products at Nampa, Idaho in conjunction with the company's 15th anniversary of chip production at its failities there (EN, July 25).

Lowell Noble, president of QD Technology, told Electronic News in an interview last week that the agreement with Zilog is significant to QD Technology because "It will get us into the low-end of the market in a year-and-a-half or two years."

The two companies will make similar products but will address different segments of the market.

"They (Zilog) will make the chip as well as us but we will look at different areas," said Mr. Noble. "We address the professional market, such as medical. They will address the consumer market. We will sell boxes and systems, and they will sell the chips only. We are selling a five-chip chipset and selling it in chip form or box form. Zilog is licensing the technology and they will come out with a compressed system that will be less expensive."

QD Technology uses another foundry, which Mr. Noble declined to name, to manufacture its chips.

When asked whether QD Technology's video enhancement technology could help delay even further the long-anticipated implementation of HDTV--which is backed by the self-proclaimed Grand Alliance and the Federal Communications Commission (EN, May 31, 1993)--Mr. Noble said: "Sure. There is no change required; it's standard NTSC and does not require any FCC approval."

He added, however, that although the technology can serve as an interim step prior to HDTV, the technology can also be linked to provide enhanced NTSC video signals in HDTV sets, and QD is seeing strong interest from companies developing HDTV systems that also show enhanced NTSC. "Makers of HDTV sets want to have a high-quality picture on the normal broadcast as well as HDTV broadcasts."

QD Technology's current line of custom video chip products includes the QDT-1001 Professional Y-C Separator--an NTSC video processor that separates luminance and chrominance, maintains available resolution and eliminates dotcrawl and cross color, according to the company. Other QD products include the QDT-2001 professional temporal Y-C Separator and Motion Detector, QDT-3001 Video Line Interpolator, QDT-4001 Video Enhancer, and QDT-5001 Timer.

John Petersen, Zilog's program director for Consumer Products, said that fundamentally what the technology does is take an NTSC signal and convert it to a digital signal. "It begins to employ the processing algorithm to remove artifacts such as dot crawl, and it employs digital processing to what was an analog signal. It will do line-doubling, or line interpolation. Instead of having two lines that duplicate each other, we look at the two adjacent lines and do some interpolations as to the line we are adding."

He said current NTSC is 525 lines and the QD technology doubles it to 1,050, or about 90 percent of the quality of HDTV.

Although they include digital signal processing techniques, the chips cannot be classified as DSPs. "It's not a general purpose processor and it's not programmable (like a DSP)," Mr. Petersen said. "It will be hard-wired logic. To create a general purpose part would require more logic. We think it's very focused on this application."

Referring to the forthcoming Zilog chipset, he said it will go in the baseboard in the TV set and will initially show up in large screen projection sets. "It can be used for any TV. The first application will probably show up in high-end video systems. Where benefits show up best are in projection TVs. That's where some of the problems with NTSC show up when you have it blown up really large. One application is professional systems; also TVs with large screens, such as 35 inches and above. We don't expect this will go into the low-end TV in the near term."