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Faroudja Labs was a San Francisco based IP and research company founded by Yves Faroudja. Faroudja Labs should not be confused with Faroudja Enterprises, Yves Faroudja's latest venture.

Faroudja specialized in video processing algorithms and products. Its technologies for deinterlacing and inverse telecine have received great acclaim within the consumer electronics industry and have been widely used in many electronic devices, such as TV sets, set top boxes and video processors.

Efforts by Faroudja generated more than 65 patents and provided technology licenses to consumer electronics companies, and helped receive three Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards (one for advanced encoding techniques, a lifetime achievement for Yves Faroudja and one for HDTV upconversion used in network broadcast applications), as well as numerous other awards.

Since 2007, the Faroudja brand and all associated video processing IPs are part of STMicroelectronics, an international semiconductor company, who now uses the technology in System-on-Chip (SoC) products.

Faroudja Inc. was founded by Yves and Isabel Faroudja in 1971, specializing in video quality improvement, particularly for VCRs, and soon became an acknowledged leader in this field. By 1973, their patents were licensed by various household names in the consumer electronics and broadcast industries.

Faroudja was notable for co-development of the Hi-8 and S-VHS standards in 1987-1988.

In the 1980s, the company developed technologies for the deinterlacing of NTSC signals, including motion adaptive processing algorithms. In 1989 Faroudja invented and patented film mode detection, also known as inverse 3:2 pulldown detection. Faroudja was the only company in the world that had the ability to detect the original frames of film within the video stream and reconstruct an accurate image, free of motion artifacts containing full vertical resolution.

In 1991 the company created the first professional grade line doubler (480p) (deinterlacer) which incorporated this technology, for use with large CRT projectors used in Hollywood screening rooms and large home theaters. The highly acclaimed LD1 Line Doubler takes standard definition signals and converts them to higher resolutions with improved image quality, free of the usual NTSC artifacts (cross-color and cross luminance). At the same time, Faroudja started manufacturing products based on the same technologies, including adaptive comb filters and video quality improvement products for use with Sony’s U-Matic video recorders. This technology was a key factor in the growth of the home theater industry. Faroudja’s adaptive comb filter technology was recognized with a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award in 1991.

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