FROM
THE EDITOR
This week, we take a look at mobile video. Many of us have found video on mobile devices to be a rather unsatisfying experience – largely due to the very low contrast ratios available on mobile displays in real-world environments. QuickLogic is coming to the rescue, however, with a new solution that integrates Apical’s Visual Enhancement Engine (VEE) into a low-power, low-cost customizable device. In addition to deploying VEE on their popular PolarPro platform, they’re also rolling out a new device – ArcticLink II, with an even higher-performance version of the VEE algorithm. Our latest feature takes a look.
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Kevin
Morris – Editor
Embedded Technology Journal
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Better Mobile Media
QuickLogic Offers VEE (Kevin Morris)
Tchaikovsky Symphony number four opens with the full force of the combined brass section at fortissimo introducing the main theme. One minute thirty seconds later, we are left with nothing but bassoon – barely audible above the noise floor of most home audio systems. If you try to take that CD into your car, you’re facing a serious problem. Turn the volume on the intro down to the point where it doesn’t distort your automotive sound system and a minute and a half later you’ll be listening to nothing but road and wind noise and the drone of your engine. Turn it back up at that point to hear the bassoon, and you’re just minutes from blowing the ears off your rear-seat passengers with a wall of clipped and distorted chaos reminiscent of the Chicago Symphony brass section in an airport restroom. When we take our entertainment on the road, the dynamic range we savor at home becomes a liability.
The same thing applies when you try to take that movie that looks so awesome on your plasma TV with 10,000:1 contrast ratio onto a mobile device with… 400:1? Ouch! It gets worse – that 400:1 is only in a dark room with the backlight turned up. Turn down the backlight and the highlights drop away. Move into brighter ambient light and the shadow details get absorbed into a grey reflective blob. Combine those effects and the actual contrast ratio can dip near 100:1. The result of that contrasty video playing back on your low-contrast mobile display is that most of the highlights blast away to pure white, and most of the shadow detail drops off to pure black. The quality of the video-viewing experience is drastically diminished. Turn up the backlight in an attempt to compensate, and your batteries burn off faster than you can believe. (Do you know that about 50% of many mobile devices’ power is burned in the backlight?).
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had an LCD driver device that knew the ambient light and backlight settings and could use those to calculate the available contrast range of the display, then could analyze the video stream and do pixel-by-pixel dynamic range and color correction? [more]
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