Abstract

A picture quality improvement circuit and method for a video tape recorder wherein the luminance and chrominance signals are separated from an input video signal, and the luminance signal is adaptively pre-filtered based on whether the image of the video signal is a still image or a motion image. The pre-filtered luminance signal is then sampled and folded in response to a folding carrier frequency signal in a spectrum folding circuit. The output of the spectrum folding circuit is low pass filtered and then FM modulated. The chrominance signal has its carrier frequency converted and is then low pass filtered. The converted and filtered chrominance signal is added to the modulated signal and recorded on a video tape. A played back signal is high pass filtered, demodulated, unfolded and filtered according to whether there is motion in the signal. The played back signal is also low pass filtered, carrier frequency converted and added to the filtered unfolded signal to be provided for display.