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Is the 4th Yellow Pixel of Sharp Quattron Hype?
Nom du Keyboard writes "Sharp Aquos brand televisions are making a big deal about their Quattron technology of adding a 4th yellow pixel to their RGB sets. While you can read a glowing review of it here, the engineer in me is skeptical because of how all the source material for this set is produced in 3-color RGB. I also know how just making a picture brighter and saturating the colors a bit can make it more appealing to many viewers over a more accurate rendition – so much for side-by-side comparisons. And I laugh at how you are supposed to see the advantages of 4-color technology in ads on your 3-color sets at home as you watch their commercials. It sounds more like hype to extract a higher profit margin than the next great advance in home television. So is it real?"
Only is the camera recording the picture recorded that same color.
As it has been stated, adding a new color on the TV is literally the last place that it needs to be. (First the camera that films, then the storage medium(DVD?), then broadcast(HDMI?) THEN the TV )
If you've ever had a display calibrated, you'd know that even the existing RGB color space can't be completely recreated with existing RGB-based displays. The problem is in the inability of LEDs or LCD or plasma panels to produce light uniformly in the three color channels. If you can add a 4th channel that lets the RGB color space be more accurately produced by the display, then you will see an improvement. It won't make the source any better, but the output generated by the display for that input will be better.
kc8apf
That's misleading. A lack of a fully saturated green on a monitor is a limitation with the phosphors or dyes it uses. But monochromatic light of around 515 nm is pure, fully saturated green. Fully saturated green stimulates both your M and L cones ("G" and "R" cones); that's the way your eye works.
You can achieve non-physical responses from your photoreceptors via oversaturation, drugs, or electrical stimulation. That's interesting, but it isn't "green" and it isn't a "true qualia". Thinking of that as "green" is simply because you think of the M cone as a "green" cone and the L cone as a "red" cone, but those are just arbitrary names.