Interview with Darbee Vision’s Aaron Spann (HDTV Technology)

Darbee Vision is a company whose product, the Darblet DVP 5000, received positive reviews from this site and others. The product enhances the HDMI video signal to produce a superior signal displayed on your television, be it for HDTV, Blu-rays or even video games. At the recent International CES in Las Vegas, Gaming Illustrated sat down with Aaron Spann, one of the leaders at Darbee Vision. In this interview we discuss their new product line for 2013 and also find out how their products make for a better gaming experience.

Greg Gibson (GI): This is Greg Gibson with Gaming Illustrated, I’m here at CES International. I’ve just taken a booth tour with Darbee and I’m here with Aaron Spann, and wanted to get some more information with regard to, from a gaming perspective, the Darbee units you’ve been showing off.

Aaron Span (Darbee): The Cobalt and the Darbee Vision Darblet are our two units.

Greg Gibson (GI): The Cobalt will be coming out and it’s engineered for gamers?

Aaron Span (Darbee): Yes.

Greg Gibson (GI): I just saw both of them being demonstrated, and it’s very impressive technology as to how it can take a regular HDMI signal, and process it such that it is just much crisper. You can’t describe it in a written article. You actually have to see this thing in operation, but from an application standpoint, the gamers that we have, what would they see and why will they be driven to really want to get to see this unit in operation?

Aaron Span (Darbee): From a personal gaming standpoint, one of the reasons why I play video games is to be immersed in the world that the creators have given us. As graphic engines improve the images that they give us, help bring us to that immersion point. With Darbee Visual Presence, we’re able to imbed real-depth information into the image to help immerse you further into the worlds that the creators have given us. The added depth information gives the appearance of shrubbery images, better clarity, the colors seem more vibrant, and you also can pick out details that, for myself, didn’t even realize were there before.

I play a whole manner of games, be it real-time strategy, RPG, first-person shooter. I’ll start off with first-person shooter. When you play online, a lot of the times you’ll be going up against opponents, and they’ll be crouched or they’ll be lying prone on a balcony somewhere, and they’re very hard to pick out because they, they’re flat, they blend into the scenery, and there’s really no depth perception there to pick out the differences in the scenery. You can run right by them, or be standing right on top of them and didn’t even realize they were there. When you add our process on top of it, that added depth information and clarity in the image helps you pick out the differences in objects in the scenery, and not pass up those easy kills.

From a real-time strategy standpoint, the real-time strategy games that are out there are very scenery-oriented and are absolutely gorgeous to look at, but again, they’re very flat, and adding the Darbee Visual Presence algorithm on top of it helps restore that depth, gives you a much better immersive feeling in the game.

Now I’m a big Assassin’s Creed fan, which is a great free-running RPG game and one of the great things about that game and other games such as Infamous on the Playstation, Dishonored ,which is a fairly new game that just came out is, you can go climbing around different areas and go scaling buildings, and one of the things that’s sometimes hard to pick out are the hand holds, the paths that you’re supposed to take that are there in the image, but they’re, again, hard to pick out because the image is fairly flat, and when you plug in the Darblet, or you plug in the Cobalt, it’s much easier to pick out where those hand holds are and see exactly what it is that you are looking at, without having to take a few minutes (laughs) to move the stick around, see what’s going on, and get a much longer lay of the land. It’s much easier to see what’s going on in the picture and you can make much more accurate decisions much faster then you would without.

Greg Gibson (GI): That, of course, is a lot better gaming experience, and I’ve got to tell you, Aaron, the images just absolutely pop out.

Aaron Span (Darbee): Thank you.

Greg Gibson (GI): It’s totally amazing. It’s got a wow factor, (laughter) so with that, again, this is Greg Gibson from CES and I’m here with Aaron Spann, and thank you very much and we’re looking forward to seeing you at all at E3.

Aaron Span (Darbee): Thank you.

Gaming Illustrated would like to thank Aaron Span and the Darbee team for their time at CES!