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1About Crystalio
Crystalio is the realization of a dream long held by many engineers and product designers but accomplished by few.
Over the years, Pixel Magic Systems Ltd. has devoted itself to the creation of a modular, expandable and network
ready video processing solution using the best of breed components, with a view to delivering a cinema-class video
image performance at an affordable price level.
“We envisaged a product that would be powerful enough and configurable for the Videophile, while at the same time
accessible to film enthusiasts who care about the picture, not the technology. More importantly, it should be so
designed that integration with the new breed of 21st Century ‘connected homes’ could readily be accomplished. We
take pleasure and pride to have achieved these goals with Crystalio.”
1.1 – Why do I need Crystalio?
Crystalio is designed to deliver the best viewing
experience from your video sources and video display
device. This is made possible by the use of the award
winning technology introduced by Faroudja®, inventor
of the DCDi®technology which is widely used in a
diverse range of domestic and professional AV
components.
You may wonder why you need a separate video
processor, if you can simply purchase a projector or a
DVD player with DCDi®technology built in. The reason
is performance and flexibility. Crystalio allows
sophisticated control over every aspect of video
processing, so that you can control the performance of
the entire video system to a far greater extent.
Crystalio also gives you the flexibility to enjoy this
performance from many different types of source
devices, from basic composite video sources right
through to pure digital SDI and DVI video. SDI (Serial
Digital Video) is a specialist video distribution standard
for video transmission in the broadcast industry at
maximum quality over long distance using inexpensive
co-axial cable, and while it is not available for domestic
equipment it is possible to purchase specially modified
domestic equipment that is SDI enabled. DVI (Digital
Video Interface) on the other hand is a technology
used by the computer industry to connect digital
displays (e.g. plasma panels, LCD monitors, etc.) to
PC video cards, and is only suitable for relatively short
distances of a few feet.
In a nutshell, Crystalio is able to maximize the
performance of any video sources, from traditional
SVHS recordings, video games consoles, to high
definition TV broadcast and DVD players.
The paragraphs that follow give you an in-depth
evolution of the video processing history that has led to
the innovation of Crystalio. You may skip these
paragraphs and go directly to Section 1.3 to have an
overview of the most cutting-edge technologies that
Crystalio has embodied.
1.2 – Video Processing History
Faroudja®’s technology began in the early 1970s
when Yves Faroudja and a group of videophiles
invented state-of-the-art video processing
technologies and began licensing them to other
companies. In the 1990s, Faroudja became involved
in the specification of High-Definition TV (HDTV).
This is a new television standard which is being
introduced at different rates worldwide, and vastly
improves the quality of the image that is displayed.
How is this achieved? Well quite simply by
increasing the amount of picture detail used to make
the image.
To put this into perspective, a standard definition
(SDTV) image is made up of around ¼ million
pixels, or points of light. This sounds like an awful lot
of information, more than would ever be required to
display a good quality TV image. However, when
this standard was defined the maximum screen
sizes that could be used in a domestic environment
were much smaller than those available today.
Consider that a 50” screen has four times the area
of a 25” display, and with the increased use of
projection systems meaning that 100” or even 200”
screen sizes are commonplace (16 times the visible
area). Suddenly, ¼ million isn’t very much detail at
all, and the result is any problems in the image are
now magnified to such an extent that the viewing
pleasure is reduced.
The solution is to use more pixels to make up the
image, and HD increases this by a factor of eight to
2 million. This makes a huge difference to the
quality of the image, which has been likened to
‘looking through a window’ – it really is that good.
However, while the hardware industry has now
started to produce affordable HD capable displays,
the availability of source devices and programming
to use with HD devices has been limited. The
amount of HD programming material is miniscule
compared to the availability of SD material, which
means that if you simply connect your SD video
source to your high quality display you will often be
very disappointed with the results.
reference informatio
