My friend saw a prototype of this display in person 2 years ago when he working for NVIDIA and now it looks like it's close to market: http://www.brightsidetech.com/

He told me that it's unlike anything he's ever seen before, and he's seen some really cool stuff. The huge dynamic range this display can reproduce makes images look 3-D. He said his brain took a few minutes to adjust to what he was seeing because it's like looking through a window rather than staring at a screen. The weird part is of course it is just a screen, so although it feels like you're looking through a window, it's just a device sitting on your desk. So really, it feels like you're staring at a portal to another dimension or something.

The screen uses LED's for the light source. One per LED pixel, or over 2 million for the whole screen. Since each LED can turn off completely, this display essentially has an infinite contrast ratio. It also allows 16-bits per color, so the color gamut is probably huge too.

I can't wait to see one in person, but it will likely be 5 years before they're cheap enough for the average consumer to bring home.

 

im betting itll be more than 5 years before their affordable, unless a major manufacturer puts all their eggs into the basket (like Sony w/ LCoS/SXRD).

 

That's pretty ridiculous. Very cool.

Although how real can it get? Wouldn't the image be only as good as the source that's supplying it? What kind of source would display something "as if you're looking out a window?"

 

I think he mentioned that Panasonic was going to be licensing this technology, but you're right, it could very well be longer than 5 years.

 

There are quite a few games that use HDR effects today, but of course that effect is limited by the capabilities of your monitor. There are also HDR video cameras, but I'm not aware of any way of distributing or playing back HDR video at the moment.

I create HDR photos right now, so I'd definitely appreciate a HDR display. "Soft-proofing" would take on a whole new meaning though when trying to match a print to this screen. You'd need to dramatically shrink the dynamic range to get it anywhere close to what a print would look like. That's a problem I'd like to have.

 

Panasonic is a weird company. I've never quite figured out their relevance.

They seem to always be at the forefront of many technologies yet seem to have little to no effect on the consumer marketplace. Yet, they seem to be doing just fine.

Anyway, cool technology none the less, it seems so obvious. I can't imagine how expensive it must be to produce as compared to current display technologies.

I've no idea how you squeeze 2+ million LED's into a 37" display. It doesn't seem physically possible. Can there really be one LED per pixel?

If my calculations are correct, that's about 60PPI, or 60 LED's per square inch. That's crazy!

 

ah ya, they don't use one LED per pixel.

from their FAQ:


in that case it doesn't sound like such a significant improvement over single light LCD, but i guess seeing could be believing. the 200,000:1 contrast ratio does speak for itself though.

 

Ah, good catch.

They must have changed their technology some since my friend saw the prototype. He had spec sheets saying there were over 2M LEDs in the panel and he made the comment that it sounded extremely expensive to manufacture.

However, I can see how they'd be able to consolodate LED's into sections. It's pretty unlikely that you'd have a scenario where one pixel was fully bright and the one right next to it would be completely turned off. More likely, there will be some transition between the very bright and very dark areas. With 1380 backlights on a on a 37" display, each backlight will illuminate an area only 1.65cm X 1.65cm in size. The display would only run into a dynamic range issue if a high contrast edge appeared within that 1.65cm block. They could tweak the output using the LCD, but it wouldn't be as high contrast as if there were seperate LEDs for each pixel.

I'll have to see it for myself.

 

Going to move this to HT&E.

 

Out of curiosity, I decided to make a simulation of what the backlight array on this display would look like.

Here's all 1380 LEDs alternating between full on (white) and full off (black):



Sample picture to be displayed:


Backlight for Sample picture (assuming 32 levels of brightness for each LED):


Backlight for Sample picture (assuming 128 levels of brightness for each LED):


50% overlay with 32-level backlight so you can see how the blocks relate to the texture of the picture. The actual image would look just like the first one, only with much higher dynamic range:





Picture 2:


32-level:


128-level:


Overlay with 32-level:




Picture 3:


32-level:


128-level:


Overlay with 32-level:




My thoughts:
I think this could be a really cool technology, and I don't think the 1380 LEDs vs. 2M will be that big of a deal. Of course 2M would be the best case scenario, but if the 1380 LEDs have 32 to 128 steps of brightness, it should be a pretty seamless display. The panels we use today only have one level of brightness and the tones between bright and dark are regulated by the LCD. They can create a pretty large range of tones with only the one level of backlight, so any extra levels would immediately increase dynamic range.

There must be some serious hardware embedded in this display to make it work though. The display is essentially segmented into 1380 separate displays. Here's how I figure it works:
1) it takes a frame and turns it into a 1380 segment mosaic
2) each segment of the mosaic is turned into a value between the range of brightness the display can produce (probably <128 levels)
3) the brightness information is passed to the backlight array and the array lights up appropriately
4) each segment of the original frame is adjusted to take the new backlight value into account
5) the adjusted frame is sent to the LCD to be displayed

I'd love to see a "how it works" done on this display because it sounds like a ton of processing to get it to display seamlessly, although I don't doubt it works.

 

I found a really good article on the Brightside HDR display from back in October '05: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...hdr_edr/1.html

It looks like I was mostly right about how the panel would work, but they use round LED's instead of square ones.

I can't wait to see one myself!

 

Dan, there's not much revolutionary about an LED-backlight array now.

There's already several TV's and monitors on the market using that technology, and many of the LCD's coming out in 2007 are all LED-array based.

Almost all of them have contrast ratios exceeding 200,000:1, some as much as 1,000,000:1.

 

They mention the 1,000,000:1 contrast LCD in the article. They achieved the 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio by limiting how bright the LED's can turn on. The brightside display is 8 times brighter.

 

They mentioned Sharp's 1,000,000:1 LCD from 2 years ago. They've no mention (since the article is quite old) of the 2007 models from various manufacturers including but not limited to just Sharp.

Nevertheless, so far as maximum brightness is concerned, I have the brightness of my Bravia at only 23% of its maximum capability. Given that, I'm not sure how necessary sun-like brightness is.

All that said, ignoring the 1,000,000:1 LCD's, the Brightside display is only 200,000:1. That's a contrast ratio range that is quickly becoming average in the LCD world.

Point being here, the LED-based technology and high contrast ratio aren't really anything to set this display apart.

 

Looks really cool.

 

The 48-bit processing and super bright LED's are what makes this panel unique in today's market. They needed liquid cooling for these LED's, so I doubt they're the same as the sets that were just released, unless of course they needed liquid cooling too. No doubt other companies are working on HDR monitors, but I haven't seen anyone else claim that their LCD panels can produce a larger than normal dynamic range.

The contrast ratio of these displays really doesn't tell you much. When you can turn your lights off completely, the "max brightness divided by minimum brightness" formula doesn't work. Hence, the Brightside display essentially has an infinite contrast ratio. They used an alternative way of measuring contrast ratio, resulting in the 200,000:1 figure on their spec sheets, but it's just as meaningless as a 1,000,000:1 or 10,000,000,0000,000:1 ratio.

Really what you need to know is how dark can a display go, how bright can it go, how many steps are there between dark and bright, and finally, how are the steps distributed.

The thing to keep in mind is that this is a monitor, not a TV. There just aren't any uses for such a display in the living room at the moment. DVD's and HDTV don't contain any additional dynamic range information, so those applications would see little benefit from a set like this right now.

A future version of the XBOX would likely be able to take advantage of an HDR TV. In a first person shooter, a flash-bang grenade would actually have the same effect on you as it would in real life. You'd be temporarily blinded by the bright light as if you stared into the sun for a second. Or, if you're in a racing game, driving through a tunnel would be dark, then when you exited, the bright sun would dazzle your eyes.

 

definately agree with the latter points.

my whole point was that the LED-array is not what is making this display unique.

its definately got many cool processing features.

 

Just re-read this and had to make note on this comment.

BrightSide is clearly marketing this product as a TELEVISION display. This is why they make comparisons to other televisions on their site and why the review you posted makes comparisons to televisions.

The display features SIMULATED HDR technology.

There is (or at least they want us to think there is) benefits to this type of display as a television.

 

Interesting. That's a curious position for them to take since there's no practical reason for an HDR TV anytime soon. There aren't any HDR broadcasting standards, or even any HDR recording equipment for that matter. It would be probably at least a decade before we could see an HDR signal sent to our homes.

There are many current applications for an HDR monitor though.

Now read the PM I sent you...