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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."
Do not look into the Sharp LCD Display with your remaining eye.
liqbase
I don't think my eyes are good enough for that...I'll have to have another talk with my lasik surgeon that cheap rat bastard...
Insinct is stronger than Upbringing - Irish Proverb
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.
Doesn't this start to become meaningless at a certain point? I mean, is 1,000,000:1 really any noticeably better than 100,000:1?
Bradley Holt
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?
"#000000" = black hole; do not touch screen or you'll lose a finger as not even light can escape a black pixel on this display
"#ffffff" = surface of sun; again, do not touch. In fact, wear these protective goggles.
How about "manufacturer releases LCD display where pixels don't commit suicide as soon as you look at the screen sideways"
:P
Or "manufacturer releases LCD display where black is black, not grayish"
Or "manufacturer releases LCD display that is actually usable in a heavily lit environment"
Even for movie professionals I'd guess that this is at least as important as being able to see sweat pores on an actress' skin
--
Smash hit ball matching game for pc & mac, Atlantis: http://www.funpause.com/
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(1) 1x10^6:1 LCD screen + (1) monkey holding a magnifying glass = "Tartar Word Domination!!!"
You could frickin' blow up the moon with that laser.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Maybe not for the average gaming home application.
...
But in medecine/radiology it can be really useful : makes it easier to spot small subtle differences between to shades of gray on a X-ray pic, when these are located on a larger scale.
i.e.: when an X-ray image has ~1000 shades of gray, and clinically significant information lies in features that are only 2 or 3 levels appart.
You must either use a high contrast display (like this one, or "special for radiology high contrast CRT", or "printed on transparent film and then displayed with ultra-bright backlight")
Or play a lot with contrast & lightning parameters until selected window makes the differences less subtle.
Or even better, use both technique at once.
Also, I'm sure the pr0n industy will find a way to do something useful out of such screens.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
http://sharp-world.com/corporate/news/051003.html
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
I have _never_ seen a display that was both big enough to be useful _and_ accurate.
Actually, this article is about one of the points you raised. The display has fairly high pixel dimensions, but since it's a very large display it's not actually that high resolution. It's nothing fancy in that regard - no pores on skin here.
/at the same time/.
What it *does* do, according to the spec, is solve the greyish blacks and muddy whites problem. Comprehensively. That's what a contrast ratio means - it's the ratio in brightness between the brightest white and darkest black the display can produce
I think the point is that LCDs don't produce a black pixel, because they work by blocking the light from a lamp behind the screen with a thin film of liquid crystal. They always allow some light through, hence the grey appearance of cheap LCDs
I saw a photo of the screen on a website and the contrast looks exactly like my current screen. Where's the improvement?
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
Does any else get the mental image of turning on this monitor and suddenly having every square inch of one's face pierced by tiny little pixel-sized laser beams?
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.
It should be duely noted that the projector-LCD system presented in the link has a measured ratio of about 54,000:1 as opposed to the theoretical 200,000:1 ratio. However, I plan to build a $3000 display with a ratio of about 70,000:1. The projector-LCD systems have the advantage of being able to take high precision illumination values. You effectively double the amount of information that can be fed into the display by having two "screens" (the projector and the LCD). Perhaps those who want to experiment with HDR imaging and do not mind a bit of bluring should consider building one of these $1500-$5000 setups, as opposed to those 100,000:1 or 1,000,000:1 displays.
For those who have sunglasses, happy hacking.
*I would have given a HTML link if the Authors' links were functional.
Hmm, "LCD Display"...that must be something like a "GUI User Interface". Can we mod the original story as "Redundant"? :-)
Matthew Jeppsen
www.FresHDV.com
This, of course, is rather silly. We cannot see simultaneous contrast of a billion to one. Our retina is not black, so the light will scatter around in the eye, and give us a flare signal of about a percent or so. We are used to rejecting a low light level like that. That would give us a sensible contrast ratio of 100:1. But this is not the whole story either - if you have a scene on a monitor with only 100:1 contrast, it might look OK in office lighting, but the shadows will look very 'milky' in a darkened room.
In our experience, people using monitors or digital projectors to simulate film will need something like a 1500:1 contrast ratio. There seems to be a point somewhere a bit beneath 2000:1 where the blacks come convincing, and the viewer will accept the simulation. There is some point about 1200:1 where the blacks stop looking convincing, and start looking grey.
If you are trying to match a display to a projector, it is nice to have another factor of two, so you can match the absolute brightness without having to go to the display white. You may want to get this because you sometimes have to drive the RGB channels beyond the white point to get bright and clean looking pastel colours.
You will want to have a continuous tone curve. Field-emission devices will have a cube-type power law down to a point, and then they will cut off exponentially. This may give good-looking greys down to a point, and then plunge into black, crushing all the shadow detail. That does not look as nasty as 'milky' shadows, but it is not that much better.
So - about 3500:1 is good for simulating colour film. However, colour film is pretty dim - 16 ft-lamberts (50 cd/m2) is standard. Images look a lot more colourful if they are brighter. If you want really high-contrast images, you need something like a LCD monitor with a variable LED blacklight, which gives you your local 100:1 contrast and a huge overall contrast ratio. Have a look at http://www.brightsidetech.com/tech/bstech.php.
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.