Snell & Wilcox upgrades Alchemist Ph.C to HD

Everything in the market continues to move up to HD with the latest product being Snell & Wilcox’s motion compensated HD standards converter: the Alchemist Ph.C – HD.
Joe Zaller, vice president of marketing at Snell & Wilcox, says, “With the Alchemist Ph.C HD, we’ve brought this same level of quality and robust performance to the HDTV standards conversion arena, while at the same time adding many new powerful features and additional flexibility for our customers.”

The product of extensive research into the exacting demands of HD frame-rate standards conversion, the new Alchemist Ph.C – HD yields converted images of unparalleled quality and clarity so that even the most dynamic inputs are delivered with stunning detail, free from artifacts and virtually indistinguishable from the original HD content.

The new Alchemist Ph.C – HD offers high-definition frame-rate conversion for both 1080i and 720p standards, it also performs SD standards conversion between 50Hz and 60Hz material and HDTV upconversion, downconversion, and crossconversion. This gives users unsurpassed power and flexibility to leverage content around the world in virtually any standard or format without compromising quality.

The system’s architecture provides two outputs that can be used for transmission of program feeds in multiple standards or formats depending on the requirements of the customer. This dual output capability provides enormous flexibility to users who must deliver content in multiple standards or formats.
When designing the Alchemist Ph.C HD, Snell & Wilcox engineers rigorously refined and optimized both the company’s Ph.C and standards conversion algorithms to deal with the demands of HDTV video systems. The resulting system delivers pristine images. The converted output of the Alchemist Ph.C HD is virtually artifact-free, low in noise, and high in detail and fidelity, especially in fast-paced HD news, sports, and live events. The Alchemist Ph.C – HD maintains a sharp, clean look whatever the content or display.

In addition to superior standard and format conversion capabilities, the Alchemist Ph.C HD also boasts a wide range of valuable features including comprehensive audio handling, noise-reduction options, and CleanCuts technology, which offers reliable and accurate cut detection, automatically ensuring that video cuts of input and output material are identical.