Patent ID: 7321401

Claim:
A contour emphasizing circuit comprising: a contour pick-up for sampling a contour component from an input video signal; a level judging unit comprising a decoder for discriminating the luminance level of the input video signal from n number of luminance levels based on upper m-bit data of the luminance levels, n being equal to 2 (m−1) ; a coefficient control unit for selectively choosing a coefficient from n number of coefficients based on the judging unit so that a high-value coefficient is selected for a high luminance level and a low value coefficient is selected for a low luminance level, multiplying the chosen coefficient by the sampled contour component to obtain a product and outputting the product; and an adder for adding the product to the input video signal and outputting a contour emphasized video signal, wherein coefficient values are either equal to zero or fall within a range that is less than ½ x but greater than or equal to ½ (x+1) , x being an integer ranging from 0 to n.