Netbook, smartphone, and tablet makers love to point out the technology that lets you watch HD video on mobile devices. And sure, it’s handy to be able to copy your HD video collection to your portable device for viewing on the go without spending hours transcoding media files first. But let’s face it: It still seems a bit silly to watch a 720p or 1080p video on a device with an 800 x 480 pixel display — especially if you’re talking about streaming internet video. Japanese telecom KDDI is working on technology that might make it seem a bit less silly.

Here’s how it works: You’re watching a high definition video designed to play on a desktop PC or an HDTV, but you’re watching on a tablet with a low resolution screen. Clearly, the video provider doesn’t need to waste bandwidth by streaming the whole video at full quality. But if the source video has a higher resolution than your screen, you can zoom in to a specific section for greater detail. KDDI’s technology lets you do that without using any more bandwidth or video hardware, because the whole thing is handled by the remote server, which simply crops the video and sends it to your device.

That way you can benefit from the same high resolution video on your phone or tablet as you do on your PC or TV… plus you can feel like you’re living in the future, since you can now “enhance” imagery and spot the bad guy’s reflection in a mirror.

Videos after the break.

via MobileCrunch

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2 replies on “KDDI develops tech for watching HD videos on mobile screens: Enhance!”

  1. “zoom in for hdtv resolution in detail” (in fact on a lousy screen)….. welll, well what are techies not good for. i for my part count this under: what the world never needed, never wanted

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