Adjusting the Picture for HDTV

By Laura A. Locke/San Francisco

Electronics retailers have a dirty little secret about those pricey HDTVs: the pristine pictures on showroom models that wow consumers aren't what they will be watching at home. That's because most TV content is still delivered in standard-definition format. Result: Seinfeld reruns will look worse on a new $2,500 HDTV.

Silicon Optix owns the fix. The firm, based in San Jose, Calif., has designed an advanced video-processing chip that cleans up video for all sorts of displays. The private company's secret sauce is its Realta chip, which enables real-time, pixel-by-pixel processing of HDTV, delivering Hollywood-quality video to consumers at a fraction of the cost. It's like having a "supercomputer on a chip," boasts Paul Russo, 62, Silicon Optix's fast-talking CEO. The Realta is truly industry changing because it's the first programmable video-chip processor. The video chips can be upgraded on site or over the Web, so they don't have to be replaced. Suddenly those old reruns are starting to look a whole lot better.