RGB LED Is Getting Its Time in the Spotlight. Will TV Shoppers Tune In? (pcmag.com)
- Reference: 0179696380
- News link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/10/07/1855232/rgb-led-is-getting-its-time-in-the-spotlight-will-tv-shoppers-tune-in
- Source link: https://www.pcmag.com/news/rgb-led-is-getting-its-time-in-the-spotlight-will-tv-shoppers-tune-in
Avi Greengart of Techsponential told PCMag the difference in color fidelity was not subtle when he viewed Samsung's version. PCMag found the Hisense 116UX the brightest TV with the widest color range he had evaluated. Both the 116-inch Hisense and Samsung's 115-inch model list at $30,000. TCL introduced RGB sets in China at prices starting at the equivalent of $1,150 for a 65-inch model. Greengart cautioned that it remained unclear whether the technology would rapidly decline in price or stay expensive like MicroLED.
[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/rgb-led-is-getting-its-time-in-the-spotlight-will-tv-shoppers-tune-in
"Expand" the range? (Score:2, Interesting)
This technology still builds the color image with red, green, and blue pixels, just with a different mechanism for presenting them. I don't see how this "expands" the available range of colors.
Re: (Score:2)
By either increasing the gap between the brightest white and blackest black, or the number of steps between the brightest R, G, or B and black.
Re: (Score:2)
Then it expands the intensity range, not the actual color range. I read TFS/TFA as meaning the latter, because that is actually what it said.
Adding more steps makes the color-range less granular, but doesn't increase it.
Re: (Score:2)
The online definition of granular is "made of, consisting of, or seeming like granules". From this, I surmise "less granular" means the granules are less apparent, i.e., smaller. One can continue to make the granules smaller until they are no longer perceived, i.e., not apparently granular at all.
But there appears to be confusion on this matter. *shrug*
Re: (Score:2)
"Colour" is created by stimulating the three types of cone cell in your retina. Being able to stimulate them with a greater range and granularity of intensities, particularly on the bottom end, increases the colour gamut.
The problem with regular LCDs is that the crystals aren't perfectly effective at blocking out the light so your blue always has a bit of red and green in it, etc. If you're actually creating the red, green and blue light then you can just not do that, which gives you access to pure red, blu
Re: "Expand" the range? (Score:2)
How do you expect the number of possible colors to increase? I've described two ways. Sure, you can add additional component colors but you can mix almost any color with just RGB.
Re: (Score:3)
Read up about about color gamut. I was a skeptic of HDR until I saw true HDR content presented on an OLED TV in a dark room. It really does make a huge difference, simply in the vibrancy of the image. This goes beyond saturation and contrast.
It has actually been a big failing with LCD TVs... they really aren't capable of good HDR. Maybe this technology can bridge the gap.
Re:"Expand" the range? (Score:4, Interesting)
LCDs are not perfect. When fully off, they still leak some light through. When fully on, there is some transmission loss. A pixel technology with zero light leakage (because it has no backlight) can therefore show a wider range of intensities for each color channel, and thus a wider range of colors.
If you look at it from the perspective of 8-bit-per-pixel RGB, the theoretical range is 255 intensity levels per channel, but if LCDs lose the bottom 10% that leaves 230 available levels (theoretical 0-255 versus practical 25-255).
All of that said, I wonder how visible the difference is. This seems like something that would be easy to game by playing with the signal processing. It would be interesting to see results from double-blind testing, from an organization that doesn't depend on advertising dollars from the manufacturers in question. Hopefully prices on these eventually get reasonable enough for Consumer Reports to do some proper testing at some point.
Re: (Score:2)
LCDs are linear and your eyes are very much not, so the bottom end is extra important. I expect it makes a big difference, probably very similar to OLED, if the image is something with contiguous blocks of saturated colour at least as big as the LEDs.
Re: (Score:2)
The colours able to be presented are muted thanks to the backlight being an imperfect colour source. The point of this is that by using a pure wavelength source like an LED as a backlight for a red scene behind the LCD panel, the LCD panel can display a redder red. Likewise for other colours (greens and cyans are the biggest beneficiaries to this, reds and blues less so).
Unfortunately there's a downside too. The backlight RGB LEDs have multiple pixels in front of them so that cant' produce a perfectly satur
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite. This is the latest evolution of backlit LCDs. Instead of the backlight being a grid of white LEDs, each of those LEDs is now RGB. So the color you see is a combination of the backlight and the LCD. But it's limited because each RGB will affect a large number of individual pixels.
It's not comparable to OLED where each individual pixel emits its own light. [1]MicroLED [wikipedia.org] is, which has each pixel made up of tiny RGB LEDs. But this is not to be confused with TCL's "RGB Micro LED" mentioned in the summary.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroLED
Re: (Score:2)
No, this is still backlit LCDs.
The LEDs are still 'just' a backlight, but now a colored backlight. You basically have an OLED-like characteristic of emissive lighting at some resolution. The problem is the resolution of these LEDs would be something like a 128x78 display. Impossibly low even by old fashioned 'SD' standards.
So you have a 128x78 active LED display, and then an LCD panel on top to give it resolution. So you get to pick a good tiny local backlight color and minimize how much extraneous unwante
I guess this means it's that time again... (Score:3)
All the ads will be displaying colorful tropical birds and fish.
Re: (Score:2)
And clowns.
Re: (Score:2)
Looks like the displays have something like a 128x78 'pixel' active LED display as a backlight, and then put an LCD on top of it.
So if a tiny region of the display is just dim reds, then it can get a backlight that is doing just that and the LCD doesn't have to block as much other stuff.
such great technology to watch things (Score:2)
and mostly crap to watch.
Not a shopper (Score:3)
I won't be shopping for a new TV until my 14YO 37" dumb LG dies.
Re: (Score:2)
I certainly don't buy TVs just because there's some new amazing super duper technology. it's rarely worth it.
Re: (Score:2)
I mean... a 37"? Probably not worth upgrading as long as it works, and the upgrade is the same size. But upgrading to something much bigger would definately be worth it.
Re: (Score:2)
If you are a movie buff than go for it. But I might watch one a month if that....
Re: (Score:2)
I've found that about fifteen to twenty years is good enough to give noticeable improvements. I bought a 4K LED-based TV a few years ago to replace the Plasma TV that I had for over a decade and there was a considerable difference. Adjust for inflation I paid less for a larger display with higher resolution and better picture quality. Anything I could buy now would only be marginally better in one of those dimensions and would cost more for it. In another decade or so I'll likely be able to get the same kin
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, the writeup reads like any number of audio golden-ears reviews where the new gadget is always vastly clearer, more distinct, better soundstage, etc than the previous, which that was vastly clearer, more distinct, better soundstage, etc, than its predecessor, which in turn was vastly clearer, more distinct, better soundstage, etc than the one before. Which makes you wonder why they spent $10,000 on the previous model if it was so obviously inferior.
And then a non-golden-ears person does an A/B test o
It just displays whatever you want? (Score:2)
That sounds pretty smart.
Re: (Score:2)
They don't make them like they used to. RTings is currently doing a years long burn in reliability test with a bunch of TV's to see how they hold up.
[1]2+ Year Longevity Update! More Failures and What’s Next For Our 100+ TV Test [youtube.com]
Particularly interesting to see the failure modes, on a Sony set a single backlight LED failed and it shuts down the entire display.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chcwz5LYiHs
Re: (Score:2)
my dad is a TV service person here in Argentina. We work for that major dutch brand that is now owned by a chinese holding company.
90% of today's repair work is disassembling the entire display panel and replace individual LEDs. the other 10% is telling people their problems are due to bad wifi reception.
once that's done, replace the PSU's feedback resistor to run the new LEDs at a lower current
pro tip: as soon as you buy a TV, open it up and replace that resistor. Sure, your warranty will be voided, but yo
Re: (Score:2)
I purchased a Samsung 40" back in 2010 that still works fine. A friend recently upgraded from his curved 55" Samsung to something larger and gave me the 55". Now I have two old TVs that work just fine with the 40" as a backup. Purchasing the newest tech rarely pays off, and besides, these new "smart" TVs are annoying as fuck. No thanks. I use an HTPC I build years ago running Kodi attached to my NAS. What more does anyone need? The TV is just a dumb monitor, the way it should be.
Re: (Score:2)
Same here. I will not be buying a new TV until my dumb Samsung screen is no longer repairable.
No matter what new features a new TV offers, why would I willingly expose myself to snooping and advertising? Thanks, but no thanks.