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Panasonic Announces 1,000,000:1 Contrast Ratio LCD Panel To Rival OLED (androidauthority.com)
OLED panels have always been known to have higher contrast ratios than LCD panels, but that may be about to change with Panasonic's recently announced LCD IPS display. The display boasts a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, which is up to 600 times more contrast than some of the company's conventional LCD panels that tend to offer around 1800:1 ratios, and rivals OLED specifications. Android Authority reports: Panasonic has accomplished this through the use of its new light modulating cell technology, which allows the company to switch off individual pixels in the display using a secondary control layer. Typically, LCD backlights mean that either the entire or only large parts of the display can be dimmed at any one time. OLED panels switch off lights entirely for a black pixel to offer very high contrast ratios, and this new LCD technology works on a very similar principle. This is particularly important for reproducing HDR video content, which is becoming increasingly popular. Furthermore, this new light modulating cell technology allows Panasonic to increase the peak brightness and stability of the display, which can reach 1,000 cd/m2 while also providing HDR colors. Many other HDR TV panels top out in the range of 700 to 800 cd/m2, so colors, highlights, and shadows should appear vivid and realistic. Panasonic plans to ship the new display starting in January 2017 with sizes ranging from 55 to 12 inches.
Manufacturers values for contrast ratio and NITS (luminosity per unit area) are generally regarded as being complete bullshit.
I'll wait until I've seen some independent tests before I throw out my existing TV
Panasonic plans to ship the new display starting in January 2017 with sizes ranging from 55 to 12 inches.
Wow! Can't wait for my new 4K Ultra-high definition HDR.... er 12" TV...?
Who knew that turning off the light to create darkness was the best way to make a pixel Black? Genius!
This should lead to another TV-replacement cycle, as we all throw out our old OLED TVs from Black Friday and buy buy buy!
I get the feeling the summary is missing something.
Reading between the lines, it sure sounds like they just stacked two LCDs and bumped the brightness of the light source. Mind you, that's a very good idea. The new underneath layer probably only needs single R/G/B group resolution in order to achieve the claimed specs, making it somewhat easier to manufacture, although alignment is still going to be important to get right, as will appropriately close bonding of the two planes to control leakage from one luminance cell (for want of a better word) to the neighboring RGB cells in the color layer.
A highly-motivated enthusiast might be able to get close to the same results by merging two existing IPS monitors and bumping the light source brightness.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
To achieve a one million - to - one ratio, requires 20 bits.
Shave and a haircut, 2 bits
To achieve a one million - to - one ratio, requires 20 bits.
20 bits would be required for a gradient, but you could still accomplish a 1,000,000:1 ratio with a 1-bit monochrome image.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Is this another Panasonic thing where they try to compete with an old technology (e.g. Plasma) while everyone else is switching to the new type?
If it was a 12" 4k display 1,000,000:1 at 1-bit would still be pretty interesting. Everything could be half-toned pretty well.
I was the last nerd to upgrade from a paperwhite grayscale VGA monitor ("256 shades of gray") to color. Also probably the only person to run Windows 3 on an IBM EGA graphics card in 'Monohcrome Graphics' mode on an MDA monitor. (better aspect ratio than Hercules Graphics)
Congratulations! You're one of the 10,000 people today discovering floating point numbers!
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
I'm glad I got my plasma when I did in 2014 - excellent picture for the price. I just wish others appreciated picture quality over a race to the bottom so that there would be enough demand to sustain a production line....
To achieve a one million - to - one ratio, requires 20 bits.
4K video uses 36 bits per pixel, 12 bits per color. So you couldn't get a million intensities of one color, but it seems likely that the color gamut easily includes a million intensity levels.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Would terms like Dolby Vision or HDR-10 support allow readers to understand the results?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
OLED looks great the first year, then starts yellowing. I'd rather have a panel that looks good for the 7-10 years I'll probably use it. This sounds good to me.
Twinstiq, game news
Wrong in 2 ways. First, learn about gamma. Second, the lowest brightness level can be defined to be zero, not one.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I work for Dolby Laboratories, and am deeply involved with high-dynamic-range content creation and hardware.
We created the SMPTE 2084 standard HDR EOTF (electro-optical transfer function.) It turns out that human perception is such that by choosing the luminance for code values to be just barely indistinguishable from the adjacent ones, you can get 0 to 10,000 nits (10x as bright as this Panasonic display) with only 12 bits. SMPTE 2084 is what all HDR TVs are using today.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Go outside. Live.
To achieve a one million - to - one ratio, requires 20 bits.
No. Imagine you have a candle and an airplane's landing lights. You only need 1 bit.
0 == 1 lumen
1 == 1,000,000,000,000 lumens.
That's a trillion to one contrast ratio with one bit. If you want to be really pedantic contrast ratio isn't actually interesting because while 1:1,000,000,000,000 is a high contrast ratio, it's actually impressive because of the dynamic range not the ratio.
0 = 0 lumens
1 = 1 photon
That would be an infinite contrast ratio. And also expressed by one bit but not what most people think of when they think of high contrast ratios.
LCD display manufacturers keep showing all kind of contrast ratio numbers, and no matter how many zeroes, they fail this simple test:
When gaming in the middle of the night, I switch on the screensaver set to "blank" (e.g. xlock -mode blank), but NOT powersave. If the display gives off enough light to allow me to go to the bathroom without tripping over things, it has a terrible contrast ratio[1].
[1] Technically, black level. Enough light to go to the bathroom vs runway lights is still a huge contrast ratio, but a home display with that kind of contrast ratio is rather useless.
This has been out for a while. Dolby bought BrightSide which first pushed individual LED backlighting for HDR LCDs AFAIK.
Maybe they have now gone to individual pixels instead of white LED? Same idea, just higher res and probably lower cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrightSide_Technologies
2005 BrightSide Demos
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/10/04/brightside_hdr_edr/8
basically we are finally getting close to previous CRT contrast levels?
http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel-429
Classic troll, classic comeback
"There is no official, standardized way to measure contrast ratio for a system or its parts, nor is there a standard for defining "Contrast Ratio" that is accepted by any standards organization so ratings provided by different manufacturers of display devices are not necessarily comparable to each other due to differences in method of measurement, operation, and unstated variables." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrast_ratio
Which makes their claims all hype. Bigger numbers look better, woohoo! They figured out how to use an lcd panel as a backlight filter under the IPS panel. Maybe we'll get to see in a consumer model before OLED prices come down.