Amazing Video De-Grungelizer

Motion DSP's new Ikena system, announced today, looks to perform some astonishing cleanup on cruddy-looking, overcompressed videos.

The initial Linux-based product (including hardware) will set you back $30,000, but this type of interpolation-based cleaning will certainly trickle down into affordable systems before too long. Check out the examples at MotionDSP.com and prepare to be amazed.

I particularly like how the demos use Lego-ized YouTube videos to make their point. So many times, I'll see an embedded YouTube link and not even feel like clicking it because the preview looks so ghastly. (In a related vein, here's a recent tutorial I wrote on using CSS and JavaScript to make high-quality poster movies.)