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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?"
Representing yellow with a mix of green and red is already a hack. What's wrong with software determining that the color of a pixel is yellow and actually lighting up a yellow light?
Maybe a yellow light looks more convincing than a red and green light right next to each other. I'd want to see for myself before making blanket judgments.
joking aside... some of the newer TVs with LED backlighting actually do something like this... Lighting up the picture with thousands(ish?) of independent LEDs (as opposed to a couple of souped up flourescent tubes) means they can selectively dim or turn off entirely sections of the backlighting. So when large parts of the scene are dirk, large parts of the backlighting is dimmed as well, thus increasing the contrast. It also saves a bit of power, making it easier for them to meet energy star standards, etc...
Parent is correct. Any colours around green and cyan are usually terribly unsaturated on most monitors. In fact, even in 'real life', it isn't theoretically possible to experience true cyan/aqua because the nearest direct wavelength will stimulate the red eye cone to some extent creating colour pollution.
There is a trick around this, which can be found by over-saturating the red cone. This weakens it temporarily, and then when shortly afterwards you see anything resembling cyan, it will appear as close to the true qualia as you could ever expect. The "Eclipse of Mars" illusion that follows in the below link demonstrates this for those who are curious:
http://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/2illusion.html
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
A lot of TV sets that use local dimming have a big problem showing starfields. The average color in a starfield is pretty dark, so the LED goes dim and not bright enough to show the stars. It really takes the punch out of Star Wars Special^n Edition if you can't see the stars.