SF Reference Room #SF-2026/01
TsugiCinema
“home theater rewoven”
The highest-fidelity place on the internet to watch and publish cinema. Made for filmmakers, musicians, and AI-native studios alike. Live today on the TsugiNode, a generational leap in streaming hardware that drives any modern 4K TV past what streaming and Blu-ray can carry.
The problem
Your TV is underserved.
We have already solved it.
Consumer displays have outrun the software that drives them. Modern 4K TVs handle smoother gradients, deeper color, and cleaner motion than the platforms ever ship to them. The services you watch on still send 8-bit 4:2:0 at commodity bitrates because that is what YouTube was calibrated for, more than a decade ago.
Cinema content lives or dies on the subtle gradients, temporal coherence, and fine textural detail in the master file. Streaming compression flattens all of it, regardless of whether the source is camera-captured film or AI-rendered. The result on your TV looks less like cinema and more like slop, regardless of how it was made.
We ship master-quality 4K to consumer TVs through the TsugiNode today, in a real customer's home. A generational leap in what a streaming set-top can carry. Visibly better on any modern 4K TV, reference-grade on premium panels. You can see it in person in San Francisco, or in your own home once you are in the alpha cohort.
What we built
Three patent-pending pillars,
One Product.
The three filed US provisional patents below sit alongside each other as a portfolio bundle. Two are running on consumer silicon today; the third is the substrate for the long bet.
Dual-layer compression
Master-quality 4K 12-bit 4:4:4 from a 30 to 38 GB file, approximately 40 percent smaller than AV1 at the same perceptual quality. Running on consumer silicon today.
Patent-pending · US Prov. 64/054,446
Plesiochronous synchronization
A multi-decoder synchronization fabric that joins two or three decoders, scanline aligned, to deliver 12-bit color from commodity 8-bit-per-decoder silicon. The Kintsugi seam, in hardware.
Patent-pending · US Prov. 63/987,139
Distributed AI training substrate
A sub-nanosecond gradient-consensus architecture for distributed AI training. Apparatus claims filed; software-analog validation across vision and large language model continual learning.
Patent-pending · US Prov. 64/055,093
Specific claim language is counsel-protected. Strategic partners under NDA receive the full technical annex on request via partnerships@tsugicinema.com.
Demand signal
159,000 organic views,
for a tutorial with no UI and a video player.
An enthusiast-community tutorial covering advanced playback configuration on the same consumer hardware class TsugiNodes run on has accumulated approximately 159,000 organic views, zero paid acquisition. The tutorial documents a barebones setup: no application UI, a single video-player surface, manual configuration. The audience self-selected into “I want master-quality playback on a Linux box” before TsugiCinema existed as a consumer brand. The polished product surface, with the Kintsugi UI, the creator marketplace, and the 90/10 economics, addresses an audience materially larger than this niche.
Tutorial author engaged with TsugiCinema as a UI and marketing consultant; named under NDA.
Technology
Three filed US provisional patents.
One working consumer device.
A vertically integrated stack from silicon to network to AI substrate. The patent portfolio below is independently externally validated. Specific claim language is counsel-protected; strategic partners under NDA receive the technical annex on request.
Filed provisionals
Duality, Trinity, Infinity
Reference rig
Off-the-shelf consumer device
Bit depth shipped
4:4:4 chroma, 4K
Creator split
to creator, every dollar
Patent portfolio
64/054,446
Duality
Keyed video compression with a cryptographically separated companion stream
Filed 2026-05-01
63/987,139
Trinity
Plesiochronous multi-decoder video synchronization
Filed 2026-02-19
64/055,093
Infinity
Sub-nanosecond plesiochronous gradient consensus for distributed AI training
Filed 2026-05-01
"Exceptionally well-positioned. Robustly novel. A non-obvious leap over the established visual-cryptography teaching."
"Structural ingenuity in the Sideband Flow Control Mechanism. An examiner would struggle to find a motivation to combine prior art."
"The strongest patentability posture in the portfolio. A profound architectural divergence from prior cross-domain references."
Patent landscape and freedom to operate
Demos and Demografx published the foundational resolution-layering patents in the 1990s. Those expire in 2026, opening a clean freedom-to-operate window. Trinity uses additive-only reconstruction, fundamentally different from Dolby Vision's predictive approach.
The stack, four layers
Layer 01
Silicon
Off-the-shelf consumer SoC running a generational-leap pipeline. Two-context decoder driven by a custom dual-layer compression scheme. Trinity FPGA reference for 3-decoder scale.
Layer 02
Pipeline
Master-quality 4K 12-bit 4:4:4 ingest. Custom keyed compression with a cryptographically separated companion stream. 30 to 38 GB per 90-minute master. Approximately 40 percent smaller than AV1 at parity perceptual quality.
Layer 03
Network
Residential edge nodes function as delivery peers, storage nodes, and (Phase 2) compute nodes. Hybrid origin and edge fabric. No crypto-speculation cold start.
Layer 04
AI substrate
Sub-nanosecond plesiochronous gradient consensus apparatus for distributed neural network training. Apparatus-claim provisional filed; software-analog continual-learning validation across vision and large language model workloads.
Live, not theoretical
A working consumer device, a generational leap on the streaming set-top, today.
The dual-layer compression pipeline runs on off-the-shelf consumer silicon, driving a reference Sony Bravia 8 II in our San Francisco demo room. We can show you in person. Email partnerships@tsugicinema.com.
- ·San Francisco reference room (Sony Bravia 8 II)
- ·Loaner TsugiNode for qualified pilot partners
- ·Technical walkthrough for strategic partners (post-NDA)
Partnerships
We are open to silicon, OEM, distribution, and studio conversations.
The TsugiNode reference design is consumer SoC today and ASIC tomorrow. The Duality pipeline is ready for SoC manufacturer integration. The Infinity gradient-consensus substrate is targeting the UALink Consortium track. If your roadmap intersects any of those, the door is open.
Silicon & OEM
SoC integration, NPU integration
Snapdragon-class NPUs, AV1 / AV2 ecosystem, dual-decoder SoCs, GPU-shader sync. Reference-design walkthroughs and technical-annex packages available under NDA.
Distribution
Architect, installer, retail
Premium home-cinema install channel. Cofounder Dylan brings architect-channel relationships from Apple flagship retail and Edge at Hudson Yards. We are quoting full rooms today.
Studios & research
AI studios, B2B compute
Selectively curated AI film studios for the platform. B2B compute for research workloads on the residential edge. Active interest from the computational biology research community.
Strategic conversations
Strategic-partner inbound is read directly by the founder. Technical annex, patent-portfolio detail, and reference-room demo offer follow under NDA.
Who we serve
For the picture.
For the maker.
For viewers
Your TV deserves more.
Your box delivers it.
Our dual-layer pipeline ships exactly what your hardware can show. Cleaner color, smoother gradients, and lower compression noise are visible on any modern 4K TV. The headline number (12-bit 4:4:4) is unlocked on reference-grade panels. The advantage disappears once it gets re-compressed by YouTube, so the honest test is on the box itself.
For creators
Your master, shipped at master quality.
Ninety cents of every dollar.
You made something that looks like what you rendered. Why does the rest of the internet make it look like something else? TsugiCinema ships your master at master quality. You set the price. Your superfans know exactly what they are paying for.
Forced ads
0
ever, on any video
Human creators are held in the highest esteem. AI studios are selectively curated to a published quality bar.
Brand commitments
Three commitments.
No exceptions.
Above the Fidelity Floor.
Every video on TsugiCinema clears a published quality threshold. Specific, measurable, documented. No other platform commits to that.
Never a forced video ad.
Pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll, interstitial: all forbidden. Forever. Display ads on browse pages only, clearly labeled, never on the page where you are watching.
Pay only for what you watch.
No platform subscription. No paid tier to remove ads (there are none to remove). Creators set their own prices. You know exactly what you are paying for.
“The creator should have the freedom to set the price for their work. The platform’s only job is to deliver it at master quality and stay out of the way.”
The long bet
We put the power of compute, storage, and AI
back in the hands of the people.
Every TsugiNode in a home is also a delivery peer, a storage node, and eventually a compute node. Operators choose which artists, studios, and research customers receive their spare compute. The platform does not capture that decision.
Large private AI is consolidating compute into a small number of data centers. There is an alternative architecture that scales residential, on the margin that matters: power, cooling, latency to the user, and consumer agency.
This is the scalable answer to data-center-bound AI infrastructure, and it is the reason the same hardware that drives your TV can also fund an open, consumer-owned compute grid.
Phase 1
Delivery peer
Edge CDN. Reduces origin egress and improves last-mile latency.
Phase 2
Storage node
Operator-controlled cache. Gifted unlocks, master-quality preloads.
Phase 3
Compute node
Spare cycles for AI inference. Operator chooses which jobs run.
Phase 4
B2B compute
Research, studio, biology workloads. Active interest from the computational biology research community.
The team
Two cofounders, one fractional CoS.
All equity-only at pre-seed.
Tong Liu
Cofounder & CEO
Hardware architecture, FPGA and ROM engineering, dual-layer compression. Sole inventor on the three filed US provisional patents. Previously at Google Search.
Dylan Lindeberg
Cofounder & COO
Operations, GTM via the home-cinema install channel, audio engineering. Architect-channel relationships through prior work on Apple flagship retail and Edge at Hudson Yards.
Wenling Ma
Fractional Chief of Staff & Head of Compliance
Three decades of governance, strategic planning, and copyright clearance experience. Money-transmitter regulatory analysis and Phase 3 studio licensing governance.
Backing this work
Lead investor and senior technical bench, aligned to convert at the right milestone.
Lead investor and Chief Scientist (contemplated)
Shaheen Hoque
Three decades of guidance, navigation, and control engineering at Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Orbital Sciences, MBDA, and Draper. Currently Director of GNC Engineering at Atropos Group and Adjunct Professor at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Personal investor and the technical sponsor of the Trinity sideband sync work. Engaged today as advisor; contemplated full-time as Chief Scientist at a major-funding or acquisition milestone.
Senior technical bench
Frontier-lab researchers and engineers
Senior AI researchers and ML systems engineers from frontier-lab backgrounds, engaged under confidentiality. Specific names and roles disclosed to qualified strategic partners under NDA.
Strategic-partner conversations and the technical-bench roster are disclosed under NDA. See about for the company story and the Kintsugi origin.
Waitlist
Join the waitlist.
Tell us who you are. We will be in touch.
- ·Alpha tester / consumer
- ·Home theater bundle (premium install)
- ·Human creator (filmmakers, EDM artists, individual authors)
- ·AI film studio (selective)
How to join
Send a short note to the address that fits you best. We read every email.
- hello@tsugicinema.com viewer · bundle · human creator · AI studio
- partnerships@tsugicinema.com silicon, OEM, distribution, AI studio applications
- press@tsugicinema.com media, interviews, demo room visits
Strategic-partner inbound is read directly by the founder. We respond within a few business days.