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Sharp LCD Display with 1,000,000:1 Contrast Ratio

i4u writes "Sharp announces in Japan that it has developed a LCD display with the world's highest contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1. The Sharp ASV Premium LCD display panel has a size of 37 inch, 1920x1080 pixel resolution and a brightness of 500cd/m2. Sharp aims the Mega Contrast LCD display at the professional TV and movie production industry. For comparison the Canon and Toshiba developed SED TV has 100,000:1 contrast ratio."

15 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sharp announces that it has developed a LCD display with the world's highest contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1.

    The Sharp ASV Premium LCD display panel has a size of 37 inch, 1920x1080 pixel resolution and a brightness of 500cd/m2.
    Sharp aims the Mega Contrast LCD display at the professional TV and movie production industry. Message to Sharp: I also want a LCD display that works well in bright rooms. No word on when this new Sharp ASV Premium LCD displays will be available.
    The highest contrast ratio we reported so far about was 100,000:1 reached by a SED TV developed by Canon and Toshiba.
    More details in this Sharp press-release (Japanese).

    110 words, the rest is ads. What an absolutely useless website.

  2. Re:Black? by Janek+Kozicki · · Score: 3, Informative

    I wonder if this thing can do black that actually looks black, or if it just gets the high contrast ratio by being able to produce whites brighter than the sun?

    it has a brightness of 500cd/m2. still too light for me, but much better than 1000cd/m2 which are far more copmmon.

    and by the way: original announcement. Why They are posting links to such crap websites in the original story?

    --
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  3. Still not good enough... by CaptnMArk · · Score: 1, Informative

    ...to put it on the outside of Hotblack Desiato's ship.

  4. Re:Contrast Ratio by jong99 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The eye has a maximum contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1. There may be little perceptable difference between the two, but the closer the better.

  5. Re:Contrast Ratio by Mprx · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, because the human eye sees brightness on a log scale, so we have a very large brightness sensitivity range. The contrast ratio of staring directly at the sun: the dimmest light we can see is about 1e13:1, so this display has a long way to go to duplicate contrasts visible IRL.

  6. Re:Contrast Ratio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    But for reproducing pictures, it's only the "simultaneous contrast ratio" that really matters - ie what you can take in in one look or from one scene.

  7. Re:Contrast Ratio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    But we are talking about contrast here. Put the the sun next to the dimmest light we can see and I bet the eye can't see the that dimmest light again.

  8. Useless specifications by smartalix · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is a bullshit spec, as are 90% of all specifications given with LCD, Plasma, and any other non-CRT display technology in existence. (The CRT guys woulds lie too if their tech weren't so mature.)

    Contrast ratio, brightness, and screen-performance information are generated by suing highly tailored test patterns and performance benchmarks that have little to do with the real image, but a lot to do with published specs.

    For example, depending on how the technology responds, the contrast ratio test may consist of a white square, box, or dot on a black field, or a measured sequence of black-to-white screens, with the measured difference in brightness given as the contrast ratio.

    The best analogy is speaker specs, which unless they are linked to recognized performance specifications (like frequency response given as plus/minus decibel variance from 20 to 20,000 Hz), are completely misleading. A speaker advertised as delivering 500 Watts may only be able to handle that much power as a transient, and even then a speaker can only "deliver" the power fed into it, which means you also need a 500-W amplifier.

    A very good example was at the latest Society for Information Display (www.sid.org) show. Samsung had both the largest LCD and the largest Plasma in existence at the show, and although the brightness and contrast "specs" for the Plasma was greater, the LCD obviously had a brighter and sharper image in operation. True, the blacks were better in the Plasma, but that was the only visible distinction to the discerning viewer and only shows how little a guarantor of performance a high contrast rating is.

    This news is certainly encouraging information, and will certainly result in a better-performing display appearing on our shelves soon. But to look at any given spec and shout "halleluia!" is being overly generous.

    --
    Read a preview of my novel CYBERCHILD at www.smartalix.com/cyberchild
  9. Re:Contrast Ratio by nonlnear · · Score: 2, Informative
    [turns off funny detector]

    If it was as bright as the sun you would probably need a fusion reactor to power it!

    Actually, a typical welding arc is brighter than the sun, and doesn't take nearly that much power. Now, to be as bright as the surface of the sun...

    --
    argumentum ad fallacium: Fallacy of defining a fallacy which allows one to dismiss the argument in question.
  10. Re:Black? by Blue-Footed+Boobie · · Score: 3, Informative
    Wait, +5 Informative? Sorry to drop the ball on this guy - but he has no clue what he is talking about.

    500cd/m2 brightness is pretty nice for an LCD display - since most of the LCD display's on the market right now are 250cd/m2 - 300cd/m2. To get a brightness of 1000cd/m2 you are looking at a Plasma Display, which is useless as a computer monitor (too large generally, burn-in issues, and even higher-resolution Plasma displays make text look like shit).

    So, 1000cd/m2 brightness it NOT common in LCD Displays currently.

    --
    DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
  11. Inaccurate Analysis by brunes69 · · Score: 4, Informative

    You don't care about the min and max here, because the amount of brightness your eye can discern depends on the dialation of your pupil. What matters is the amount you can discern at any given pupil dialation, which is much mushc smaller.

    For example, Go into a brightly lit room and try to differentiate between 10 subtle shades of black. Or go into a dimly lit room and try to discern between 10 subtle shades of white.

    1. Re:Inaccurate Analysis by DrJimbo · · Score: 2, Informative
      brunes69 said:
      What matters is the amount you can discern at any given pupil dialation, which is much [much] smaller.
      For electronic picture frame applications you may be correct, but as one of the many people who want to watch movies on their electronic displays, I want to be able to see the brightly lit scenes and the dark scenes in movies without having to get up and fiddle with the brightness and contrast of my 500:1 LCD display.

      I've been using this display for two years and I love it to death but I must admit that the limited contrast ratio is the biggest drawback.

      --
      We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
      -- Anais Nin
  12. Re:Contrast Ratio by feyhunde · · Score: 3, Informative
    It is meaningless! Ex-monitor R&D guy here.

    But not for sensitivity.

    The 1 million to one ratio has been beat by OLED screens that have an infinite Contrast ratio. But what folks need to know is there are are in fact 2 contrast ratios. Essentially you can call it dark and light room contrast. For Dark room, it's simple, maximum brightness/maximum darkness as measured in a photonics unit. . Usually you do it over 9 points on the screen and mix min brightness and min darkness for an average. When you look at manufacture's ads, this is the number you see. An LCD can be between 100 and 1000 in this number. The lost is because of LCD leakage, where the black isn't quite black and lets a small percent of light out.

    Now the real number is the light room. And Nothing is that good in Light Room. If you shine a light on an screen, you will get a fair amount back. Most LCD screens drop a factor of 10 or more in CR. Very good LCDs have an effective CR of 10-100. It's easy enough to tell the difference between white and black even with a CR of around 2. But you can tell the difference between a CR of 2, 10 and 100 even untrained. So what happens is PR hacks put out the million number, which is even more meaningless as the common methodology has the instruments not able to detect beyond the 10,000 mark. The real number is always worse...

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    I'd say more, but my guild is raiding.
  13. What Contrast Ratio Is by aarku · · Score: 2, Informative

    Most people have the wrong idea about contrast ratio. It doesn't neccesarily mean the display is extra bright. It most likely means the black is really friggen black. It is the ratio of the brightness of the white pixel to the brightness of the black pixel. Ever notice how black isn't really black on an LCD display, it's kind of lit up? That's a low contrast ratio for you. Read more at wikipedia.