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HP One Billion Colors Display Thursday, May 01, 2008 - Sarah Gingichashvili Home >> News >> Display   
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Hewlett-Packard and DreamWorks Animation have announced a new display technology, which is capable of displaying one billion colors. In a unique, two-year collaboration, the two companies have developed the “HP DreamColor” display. According to the companies, their new display will help solve a longstanding problem for digital artists, who often are forced to choose between consistent color accuracy and the affordability of the products they use.
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The announcement regarding the new display was made at the recent National Association of Broadcasters Conference in Las Vegas. The companies also revealed that the upcoming display, which will become available for purchase sometime this summer, will cost much less than today’s high-end studio-quality LCD displays. This product was specially designed for the broadcast, film/video post-production, animation, and graphic arts fields, where it is crucial to obtain rich and consistent colors – e.g. darker blacks and true whites. "In the digital world, the media and entertainment industry oftentimes sets the pace for technology innovation," said Todd Bradley, Executive Vice President of the Personal Systems Group at HP. "The HP DreamColor display is a disruptive technology inspired by users, like DreamWorks Animation, that challenge HP to deliver exciting innovations that truly impact our customers' businesses."
Some, however, doubt that the new technology will deliver a dramatic improvement in performance. Chris Chinnock, President of the research firm “Insight Media”, is one of those who are skeptical about HP’s claims. He says that while the 30-bit resolution will allow for better gradation between the color levels, the technology will not be able to increase the color gamut of a display. "It will make the displays much more accurate in being able to display colors and grayscale properly," said Chinnock. "Whether the colors look more vibrant and saturated will depend more on the backlight technology HP uses.” He also added that since most of today’s media content is generated for 24-bit quality, it is inevitable that the DreamColor technology be applied to source devices as well. TFOT has previously covered several innovative display technologies including Aquavision’s 57-inch waterproof LCD television, which was recently showcased at the ISE show in Amsterdam, Sony’s “XEL-1” – the first commercial OLED TV to go on sale, and our special coverage of the displays presented at this year’s CeBIT fair in Hannover, Germany. You can find more information regarding the DreamColor technology here. A video discussing the technology can be foudn here (including "Shrek the Third" trailer). |
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A 24 bit video system can display 16.7 million colors. A 30 bit, about a billion. The human visual system can discern about 4.5 million. The present 24 bit systems are about 4 times more than we can see. Claims of consistency, accuracy and such would require instrumentation to prove, as we'd never see it, either in production or in broadcast/display. If perhaps my training in neurophysiology is wanting in this respect, I'd appreciate knowing how claims contrary to the 4.5 Mcolor limit have been tested and supported, as the studies haven't found their way to the regular biopsychology literature. |
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" The human visual system can discern about 4.5 million." Can you point to the experimental documentation for the above claim? In particular how the number was arrived at? |
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"How can we tell" The article states that an increase in bits provides an improvement in colour gradation - this is correct. The initial reply to this shows a mediocre understanding of computer graphics systems related to human visual acuity. Take an existing 24 bit monitor, create screen-sized image with a horizontal green gradient from low intensity to full intensity and fill the screen with the image. Vertical bands of differing intensity will be completely apparent to your visual system (an artifact of the number of bits per component). Regardless of the "number" of colours that 2^24 or 2^30 gives you remember that this is a representation of a small gamut - other colours do exist outside of this rough quantisation. |
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In the article, it says "Quite simply, when we make a movie about a big, green ogre, our concern is that our ogre is the same color of green throughout the film. HP has truly changed the game with its new display, giving DreamWorks Animation full visual fidelity across the board for the first time." From what I remember in art school, there is only one color green, and many, many shades of green. Maybe we should wait until the company learns how to read, BEFORE we trust them on a project that shows more colors than the eye can discern. |
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Lots of systems already use 10-bit (and even 12- and 14-bit) colour (usually processed at 16, for practical reasons). This isn't new. What's new is if they manage to bring it to the mainstream market. And hopefully make LCDs where the colour is accurate from *any* angle. It's useless to have 1024 intermediate tones if the colour changes by 10% as I move my head up or down. P.S. - Pretty much anything you lear in an art school about colour is "subjective", to put it politely (i.e., wrong). |
-joshi.jpg "Vyomesh (VJ) Joshi - HP")
