2001 “Pioneering Development of an HDTV Upconverter”
In October 2001, Faroudja received its third Emmy award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for “Pioneering Development of an HDTV Upconverter”. Faroudja’s commitment to creating an excellent HDTV image from standard definition sources resulted in the development of the first upconverter for the television broadcast station that effectively offers the same benefits for HDTV as outlined by the Advanced Television Systems Committee.

Upconversion of NTSC, or other standard definition material to HDTV, requires the highest quality video decoding, deinterlacing, scaling and enhancement. Utilizing Faroudja’s 30 years of experience and patented technologies in high quality Chroma Decoding, Adaptive Digital Noise Reduction, Motion and Material Optimized Deinterlacing and sophisticated Non-Linear Enhancement, the company’s modular Digital Format Translator (DFT) has taken the basic concept of “upconversion” from a static, test pattern environment to the real world of broadcast television. The overall result of applying these technologies is a richer, sharper, high-definition-like picture.

Faroudja technology overview

1998 “Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award”
In June 1998, Yves Faroudja, co-founder of Faroudja Laboratories, Inc., was presented the Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. This award was given in recognition for the development of key patents in the arena of NTSC processing, encoding, decoding, enhancement and noise reduction. Mr. Faroudja was instrumental in developing the Sony U-matic, S-VHS and Hi-8 video recorders. The product applications of his inventions enjoy wide recognition by broadcasters and production houses.

At the same time, Faroudja started manufacturing products based on the same technologies. These products included comb filters and video quality improvement products for use with Sony’s U-Matic video recorders. Faroudja’s adaptive comb filter technology was recognized by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences with an Emmy Award in 1991.

The Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award is voted by the Academy governors and honors living individuals whose contributions over a long period of time have significantly affected the state of television technology and engineering. Past winners include Harry Lubcke (1991), Kerns H. Powers (1992), Richard S. O'Brien (1993), Julius Barnathan (1995), Joseph Flaherty (1996), Richard E. Wiley (1997), Yves C. Faroudja (1998), Charles A. Steinberg (1999), Charles Mesak (2000), Gilbert Wyland (2001) and Charles “Capp” Cappleman (2002).

1991 “Techniques for Minimization of NTSC Artifacts Through Advanced Encoding Techniques”
In 1991, Yves Faroudja was presented an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in recognition of “Techniques for Minimization of NTSC Artifacts Through Advanced Encoding Techniques”. Faroudja developed an NTSC encoder that generated a signal free of the usual NTSC artifacts (cross-color and cross luminance). At the same time, Faroudja started manufacturing products based on the same technologies. These products included comb filters and video quality improvement products for use with Sony’s U-Matic video recorders.

Faroudja History
Since his arrival in the San Francisco Bay area, Yves Faroudja’s efforts have been fully dedicated to the advancement of video technology. Faroudja Inc., founded in 1971, has been instrumental in improving video enhancement, noise reduction and NTSC encoding and decoding techniques, as well as pioneering line-multiplying technology. Many of these processes have been licensed to manufacturers of ¾”, SuperVHS, HQ-VHS, and 8mm video recorders. Today Faroudja continues to develop leading video processing technology and solutions that produce HDTV-quality images to the digital broadcast, display, PC/TV convergence, and home theater markets.

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