Panasonic – Acuity
With its Acuity Quintrix SR (Super Resolution) picture tube,
Panasonic is going all out to improve the nation’s TV pictures.
Two models in its latest range, the TX-36PD30 and TX-32PD30
(reviewed exclusively on p50), boast this brand-new tube, which
aims to improve upon the previous Quintrix F tube in every aspect
of the picture, particularly detail reproduction.
Acuity processing increases the number of scanning lines
from the 625-line PAL standard to 833, while the horizontal pixel
resolution is increased by a factor of 2.75 to 2,376 per line – the
highest number of pixels per line seen on a CRT set. To facilitate
this higher pixel count, Acuity uses a processing rate of 74.25MHz
(compared with a rate of 54MHz in Panasonic’s Euro-7 chassis),
but uses a reading-clock speed twice as high as the writing-clock
speed (27MHz).
The tube also achieves high brightness by using a fine-pitch
shadow mask. The phosphor dot size used by the Acuity tube is much
smaller than on previous tubes, facilitating a higher screen
resolution and a more precise detail reproduction.
The Acuity tube makes improvements in a variety of other areas.
Digital block noise is reduced thanks to a unique algorithm used by
the tube’s new Enhanced Frame Rate Converter device – resulting
in fewer motion artefacts, smoother 100Hz and progressive scan
pictures. The electron gun technology has also been updated –
it employs a Super Large-Overlapping Field (SL-OLF) for better
edge focus and a reduction in the ‘halo’ effect around objects.
In addition, 10-bit processing is used for both the luminance and
chrominance signal, while digital noise reduction is performed on
a pixel-by-pixel basis
