Looked at purely as a black box, the Teranex performs the same operations as any number of video processors: deinterlacing, scaling, selectable aspect ratios, and detail enhancement. It has both video and film modes, the latter with 3:2 pulldown recognition.
One feature of the Teranex is, to our knowledge, unique among video processors: color space conversion. The HDX Cinema can correct electronically for the slightly imprecise phosphors used (for good reasons) in all CRTs, rather than relying on the color filters employed in some other projectors. The upside: no light lost to the filters. The downside: the color correction applies only to standard-definition sources upconverted by the Teranex. Future updates are in the works that will provide the Teranex with the ability to color-correct HD sources as well.
Features and performance aside, I could tell from the Teranex's sheer size—not to mention its current draw of 9–11 amps and the wind-machine racket it makes (it must be located in a room separate from the home theater space)—that something special was going on here, and to attempt to explain its full capabilities would require an article longer than this review. The Teranex is an outgrowth of capabilities first developed for the military, and originally had to perform such feats as recognizing a missile launch registering on only a single pixel of a large video display. It was declassified only a few years ago. It processes a 480i source virtually down to the pixel level, and its main boards contain a total of 75,000 microprocessors on 75 large chips. No one familiar with electronic technology, and the realities of limited-quantity manufacturing for military and professional video applications, will wonder why this product costs as much as it does. Nevertheless, during the review period, Teranex was soliciting input about desired features for subsequent models. My suggestion: a price of $2000. Yeah, right.