Picture Quality on Philips UHD TVs

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2 Picture Quality on Philips UHD TVs Picture quality is and will remain one of the most important purchase decision factors for TVs as it directly relates to their core function: watching TV and movies on the largest screen in the house. Blurry pictures without contrast, low motion sharpness or unrealistic colour reproduction will quickly affect users enjoyment. Therefore, Philips TVs have always been designed with good picture quality in mind. Delivering the best possible picture quality is a demanding task as TV technology is developing at such high speed. Now, Ultra HD TVs, also known as 4K TVs, have entered the frame. The integration of the right level of picture processing on UHD TVs is of the highest importance to achieve a superior viewing experience. Due to the large number of pixels, picture enhancement is a demanding task for both the TVs processing unit and algorithms. Index Introduction... 2 TP Vision s approach to UHD picture quality... 2 Building block 1: the premium platform for Full HD picture quality... 2 Super Resolution... 2 Advanced artefact reduction... 3 Enhanced Local Contrast... 4 Advanced Universal Colour Processing... 4 Perfect Natural Motion... 5 Building block 2: the Ultra HD Panel... 6 Micro Dimming Pro... 6 VA-Technology... 6 Passive 3D with double vertical resolution... 6 Building block 3: the back-end processing... 6 Ultra Resolution: Upscaling to UHD... 7 Additional picture quality enhancements for native UHD (4K) content... 7 Perfect Natural Motion for UHD sources

3 Introduction Ultra-high definition (UHD) TVs feature 2,160 x 3,840 pixels. This is four times more pixels than on Full HD TVs. Processing of information for more than eight millions pixels is a very demanding task for UHD TVs. Philips UHD TVs build on the premium picture processing platform used in Philips top-line Full HD TVs. This platform delivers great picture quality from Full HD sources with high sharpness, great contrast, natural colours, and smooth motion sharpness without producing disturbing artefacts. UHD TVs (2,160 x 3,840 pixels) have four times more pixels than Full HD TVs (1,080 x 1,920 pixels) TV picture quality on the recently introduced Philips UHD TVs is based on the Ultra Pixel HD Engine; a unique and innovative technology developed by TP Vision to provide a truly natural picture quality. Next to high-quality panels and the proven picture quality platform sophisticated backend processing is another building block in TP Vision s enhanced UHD picture quality approach. It provides high-class upscaling from any resolution to UHD quality and delivers additional picture quality enhancements as well as Perfect Natural Motion on native UHD content. The engine efficiently orchestrates the UHD sets powerful picture enhancement features by addressing every element in the pictureprocessing chain from the input signal over image processing to the UHD (4K) display. As availability of native UHD content is still limited, TP Vision has identified upscaling features as the way to give consumers the TV experience they may expect from a UHD TV - even when watching non-native UHD content from Blu-ray, DVD or broadcast services. TP Vision s approach to UHD picture quality The appearance of TVs featuring UHD panels demands an advanced approach in picture quality. In addition to the top-class UHD panels featuring more than eight million pixels, the Building block 1: the premium platform for Full HD picture quality The UHD picture quality approach is based on the EISA-awarded Philips premium picture processing platform for Philips top-line Full HD TVs. It features technologies such as Super Resolution for enhanced sharpness; Artefact Reduction to avoid artefacts in scenes with fast moving objects in front of a static background; Local Contrast delivering improved contrast perception; Universal Colour Processing for more vivid colours; and Perfect Natural Motion for fluent and sharp motion scenes. Super Resolution Super Resolution is a picture processing technique that analyses incoming pictures in order to bring their sharpness to the highest 2

4 possible level independent from the source. It makes pictures from low quality sources cleaner and those from high quality sources even sharper, creating more natural and lifelike pictures. Movies from low quality sources have a lot of noise and compression artefacts. Super Resolution reduces those in real time. Lying at the heart of Super Resolution are local detail and colour measurements plus global image analysis including overall sharpness, noise and histograms. Super Resolution works in both 2D and 3D mode. Advanced artifact reduction Philips Smart TVs allow access to videos stored on the web and now also to Cloud TV channels and recorded content stored in the cloud. They are often treated with video compression techniques to reduce data rates for downloading. The same goes for displaying lowbit-rate DVD recordings. Unfortunately the compression technologies introduce many artefacts and noticeably degrade picture quality. Block structures, noise and quantization errors are the most visible problems and they are particularly prominent in images with a lot of motion. These artefacts are treated as picture information, and amplified by picture quality processing techniques, such as contrast and colour enhancements. Philips TVs have the power to reduce the visibility of these artefacts. The correction is always adjusted for the best balance between artefact reduction and sharpness for any source and quality level. The result of all of these improvements is a dramatic reduction in block structures, noise and quantization errors. Motion Compensated Digital Noise Reduction and De-Interlacing Motion compensated digital noise reduction (DNR) delivers the best compromise between noise and sharpness, even in scenes showing fast moving objects. Without DNR, the TVs would display static and moving objects with an equal level of noise. Standard DNR is in most cases able to reduce noise in areas showing static objects or large objects such as the sky, but moving objects remain noisy. Motion compensated DNR uses new detection and noise compensation algorithms that take into account both space and temporal information. It can remove noise from both static and moving objects without side effects. Without DNR With DNR With Motion Compensated DNR 3

5 Motion Compensated De-Interlacing The majority of sports content is interlaced content, which needs to be displayed on screens working in progressive mode. Conventional de-interlacing (transferring interlaced content into progressive content) creates edges and jags in fast moving objects. TP Vision s motion compensated de-interlacing algorithm completely removes feathering and also maintains full vertical resolution in fast moving objects. Advanced Universal Colour Processing To avoid negative effects on skin tones during colour processing, TP Vision integrated dedicated skin tone protection into Philips TVs twelve-segment colour processing. In addition, the algorithm individually adjusts hue, saturation and luminance. In this way it produces more life-like images showing brilliant and vivid colours while skin and white tones remain natural. Enhanced Local Contrast Local Contrast is a real-time picture analysis algorithm that enhances contrast. It combines local and global analysis of the picture with sophisticated contrast algorithms and an edge preserving filter. Local Contrast leads to better visibility of details in dark areas rather than boosting details everywhere all whilst preserving the black level of the respective area. This results in a brighter and more natural looking picture. The local analysis detects dark areas with low detail accuracy and boosts the level of detail according to the global picture analysis while preserving the black level. An additional edge preserving filter avoids blurring edges. 4

6 Film format Movies JUDDER 24 pictures/sec 2-2 Pulldown JUDDER 48 pictures/sec Perfect 3D Natural Motion NO JUDDER 48 pictures/sec Perfect Natural Motion Perfect natural motion removes motion judder. Movies are normally recorded with 24 full images every second and are then transmitted using a special (50 Hz: 2-2 pull down, 60 Hz: 3-2 pull down) film mode by adding interpolated pictures. However, although films are shown at 50 or 60 fields/second, the motion only changes at the original 24 frames/second. A simple repetition of pictures would cause a distinct judder effect, as the object doesn t follow the trajectory line. Perfect Natural Motion uses the images in the digital memory to measure and estimate the motion, speed and direction of the object, and then create new images with corrected motion positions. This ensures that film sources have perfectly smooth, judder-free, and razor-sharp moving images regardless of what direction the camera pans in or what movement takes place. The main advantages of Perfect 3D Natural Motion are: perfect judder-free motion even at high horizontal, vertical and diagonal camera panning speeds. an extremely fast catch-in of the judder-free action when a scene with fast motion occurs. substantial sharpness improvement during fast motion. perfect judder free and razor sharp To avoid halos as you can see in the left picture around the pink dress in front of the green hedge, the TV needs to do complex calculations and predictions. The algorithm needs to exactly predict which parts of the hedge will be hidden in the next frame 5

7 motion even for very small objects. halo-free and sharp pictures by removing the halo effect which normally occurs around an object moving in front of a detailed background. dynamically adapts the backlight intensity according to the picture s overall brightness level. Micro Dimming Pro also factors in the light conditions in the room via an embedded light sensor. Building block 2: the Ultra HD Panel The UHD panels build the base for stunning natural pictures on UHD TVs. Regardless of how good a TV s picture processing is, a poorquality panel can t deliver great picture quality. Philips UHD TVs feature a top-class panel with more than eight million pixels. They are backlit with Edge LEDs providing 900 Hz PMR (Perfect Motion Rate PMR is the combined result of video processing capabilities, number of frames per second and refresh rate of each frame, perfection in dimming capabilities, and backlighting technology. A higher PMR number contributes to higher contrast and better motion clarity.) Micro Dimming Pro The Philips UHD TVs use Edge LED backlighting technology featuring Micro Dimming Pro for backlight dimming. The Edge LED panels used in the Philips UHD TVs have two stripes of LEDs mounted on each side of the display. Micro Dimming Pro VA-Technology The Philips UHD TVs feature panels with VA (vertical alignment) technology. In VA panels all liquid crystal molecules are vertically oriented when the cells are inactive. This results in high static contrast ratio and brightness. The Philips UHD TV has 450 NIT light output to provide the best viewing experience in bright daylight conditions. Passive 3D with double vertical resolution UHD TVs enhance the passive 3D TV experience. Thanks to the 2160 lines of pixels used in Ultra HD panels, viewers can enjoy both flicker-free and pin-sharp 3D images. Building block 3: the back-end processing Building on the Philips premium picture quality platform and the top-class UHD panel, the back-end processing delivers what is needed to Flicker free and pin-sharp: UHD enhances picture quality for passive 3D panels 6

8 give consumers the TV experience they expect from UHD TV. As availability of native UHD content is still limited, TP Vision has identified upscaling features as crucial for UHD TVs. Motion enhancement is another feature that needs special attention and post-treatment. Ultra Resolution: Upscaling to UHD To overcome the limited availability of native UHD content, Philips 9000 series UHD TVs feature Ultra Resolution. Improvement (LTI). It changes the luminance value of each individual pixel to more closely match the surrounding pixels, resulting in a natural picture with much sharper transients. Thanks to Line Thinning, the width and intensity of lines and details in a picture can be enhanced. The width of the lines and details will be reduced through processing resulting in finer details and lines, so that viewers will experience sharper and more natural detail. Additional picture quality enhancements for native UHD (4K) content Native UHD content and high resolution photos also benefit from Ultra Resolution processing. Having employed Ultra Resolution on UHD content, images keep the original resolution but have more brilliance and natural detail. Ultra Resolution processes the original pixels to create pictures with more sharpness and detail Ultra HD has four times more pixels than Full HD for example. To put it simply, from one original pixel the upscaling application has to calculate the picture information for three more pixels to create an image, which is visibly sharper and with better details. Ultra Resolution makes use of a technology called Advanced Luminance Transient Perfect Natural Motion for UHD sources Earlier in the picture quality platform section we described how Perfect Natural Motion removes motion judder from Full HD sources. Delivery of halo-free, pin-sharp, and judder-free images with a fast catch-in after scene change from UHD sources demands huge processing power. The additional back-end processing platform on Philips UHD TVs offers additional calculation power to ensure the same motion enhancement performance as on Philips Full HD TVs. The size (width) of the detail can be set resulting in more natural detail. The amplitude of the detail can be set resulting in a more brilliance 7

9 The content in this document is accurate at the time of publication but may be subject to change without notice. All trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. About TP Vision TP Vision is a dedicated TV player in the world of visual digital entertainment. TP Vision concentrates on developing, manufacturing and marketing Philips branded TV sets in Europe, Russia, Middle East, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and selected countries in Asia-Pacific. We do this by combining our design expertise and innovative Philips TV heritage with the operational excellence, flexibility and speed of TPV Technology. With these combined strengths, we bring high-quality TV sets to the market: smart and easy to use with sophisticated styling i.e. new materials and slim design. We believe in creating products that offer a superior TV experience for consumers. With Philips TVs, TP Vision is a global leader in the hospitality market. Based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, TP Vision is the exclusive brand licensee of Philips TV for the above listed countries. The TV Company is 70% owned by TPV and 30% by Royal Philips, headquartered in the Netherlands. TP Vision employs close to 2,600 people in several locations around the globe. 8