Barco’s APA Eliminates LCD Artifacts
MAASTRICHT, NETHERLANDS - When developing ISIS, the first 2Kx2K ATC flat panel main display, Barco opted not to neglect the considerable investments the ATC community had made in 2048x2048 analog display technology over the last 15 years. Therefore, ISIS features Barco’s unique Automatic Phase Adjust (APA) functionality. APA eliminates the image artifacts that typically arise when integrating flat panel displays with analog RGB signals into existing consoles.
Controllers rely on high-resolution 2048x2048 displays, with extremely high pixel frequency (up to 360 MHz) for their life-critical decision-making. Each of these pixels has its own analog timings and like all analog systems, a drift in timings (phase shift) is unavoidable. As a consequence, the displayed pixels become blurry and unclear.The phenomenon of phase-shifted pixels was not visible on an analog CRT system. However, LCDs, which generate an internal sample clock, suffer visibly from this phase shift.ISIS provides mechanical, visual, and electrical compatibility with current CRT display technology. For accurate conversion of analog video into a digital image, Barco’s ISIS features a unique, in-house developed APA - Automatic Phase Adjust - technology, which constantly monitors and adjusts pixel timings. APA automatically locks the LCD sampling clock to the (drifting) graphics generator pixel frequency, thus avoiding image artifacts like noisy and blurry pixels.With several hundred ISIS displays in operational use, Barco’s APA has proven to be a unique solution for LCD image artifacts. All ISIS main displays feature APA and this functionality has often been a key differentiator in selecting Barco, as operators require crisp and sharp pictures over time.Barco’s ISIS family of flat panel main displays and graphics controllers bundle image quality, low lifecycle cost and compatibility into a state-of-the-art visualization solution, compatible with the worldwide de facto ATC standard 20” x 20” square format at 2048 x 2048 resolution. ISIS displays have been installed in numerous programs worldwide by major system integrators..gif)
