The Quantum Dot TV's

[Christoffer Glans]

I had my eye on OLED as a replacement for my grading LED LCD which I use at the moment for grading in Resolve. Now they announced a lot of quantum dot TV's which are much lower in price. Does anyone know any such screens that are aimed more at the video professional, so that we can calibrate the display to certain standards? Like both being able to set it to 709 for 1080p and 2020 for UHD outputs?

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Jeff would be one of the few that would know. I'm interested in how they calibrate and conform to color space.

It is fortunate that this year a number of manufacturers are releasing qd TV's and wide color space is coming.

Of older QD TV's the TCL 9000 series claims true 100% color support, but that is old hat and it is not a bigger trusted brand. I would have given more respect if they hadgiven true 138% color conformity. Hopefully the sets this year will have long trouble free life and answer wide color conformity. Just to warn you what to look out for.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I suspect we'll know for sure in April at NAB in Vegas.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

I just hope they won't rehouse a cheap QD display into a box and put a "professional" sticker on it before selling it for 20 000 USD. I hope some company realize that they can sell cheaper high quality displays now and give the option to mass produce color critical calibration ready displays in 4K.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

It's too early to tell how this is all going to play out. I think we'll have a better idea at NAB... But even then it may still be too early. I can say that many colorimeters or probes can struggle with alternative display tech like the Sharp 4-color LCD displays.

As for taking consumer panels and sticking a professional label on them, I would say that the industry has always worked this way. Panasonic plasma displays were the go-to displays for playback and mid-level color work for years and are still in use within many production facilities. Only difference between their "pro" panels and their consumer models was the additional SDI interface options in most cases. The last several model years actually saw superior calibration controls on the consumer models vs. the pro ones.

OLED has a mystique about it. The masses within the industry have convinced themselves that it is somehow superior to what we have with LED or other available display tech. It is a viable tech and does have some advantages, as well as compromises and disadvantages, just like all the other technologies out there. Most of the issues that OLED claims to solve are no longer problems with LCD display tech, although those problems seem to persist due to manufacturers cutting corners to keep production costs down. There is no reason that full-array backlighting with active per-pixel black/shadow masking isn't commonplace on "professional" or high end displays these days. Best way to drive up quality in the industry would be for people to quit buying the crap. That won't happen though...

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Because of the deeper blacks it's clear that the OLED's are better as a display technology for grading than traditional LED LCD's. Plasmas were good but they "do not exist" anymore. The QD technology is on par with OLED's and every TV technology developer seem to switch to that instead of OLED's.

I'm actually only after a QD screen that's able to be calibrated to the standards of 709 and 2020. Like having a six-color coordination and blue only switch and HDMI 1.4 or 2.0.
Using SDI now isn't that critical, HDMI can stream all the color information needed for grading.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

The consumer QD displays are supposed to be released at CES, so probably best to start there and conform them. As long as I can do within the cinena ballpark color work I am happy.

Any light leakage through a display reduces your color gamut, as we are discussing. Even the black filtered model I like seems to leak a bit, and more off angle. So OLED still has advantages, but I'm looking at a QD black filtered display. If we put a led behind every LCD pixel they might as well get rid if the LCD.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Because of the deeper blacks it's clear that the OLED's are better as a display technology for grading than traditional LED LCD's.

OLED can't match 4-element LCD with an additional black masking layer. The unfortunate problem here is that even though that technology has ben demonstrated several times over multiple years, it has yet to be used in a production display. OTOH, CES this year is showing full-array backlighting for 55"+ screens from several manufacturers. They're promoting it as if it's a new thing, but it's not and I have owned full array backlit screens in the past. Edge lighting sucks balls, especially on large screens. The lighting anomalies present on my 75" Samsung are often infuriating. Saying that, there's also no reason why OLED and LCD masking techniques can't be combined to make something truly awesome... I often wonder why display makers don't just go for it and make a truly awesome display that will serve as the standard for the next 10~20 years. Instead, we're forced to endure the endless cycle of insignificant upgrades on an annual basis while they demo all kinds of cool stuff at shows like CES. Only to never actually put that cool stuff into production. Remember, the first "production" 4K TV was actually shown at CES in 2005 or 10 years ago by Samsung. Took them 8 years to start selling them and by the time they did, we got something a lot less cool. No true 4096 pixel resolution, no full-array backlighting, both of those features shown in 2005 on a 57" screen. We're seeing this now with 8K. For the past 3 years now, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba have been showing 8K TVs. Every year, they all claim their TV is the first 8K TV. Kinda funny, but it's all happened before with 4K and with 1080p before that...

OLED does have some advantages and is definitely one of the more promising display technologies as we move forward. It doesn't really have deeper blacks than what can already be achieved. But most of the good OLED screens out there do have much deeper and more detailed blacks than currently available LCD screens at or below their price point. In a nutshell, OLED does have blacks that are capable of showing more definition than a standard RGB LCD. The blacks are far easier to control as we're not trying to black out a light source behind an LCD screen, but rather having non-reflective seemingly black "pixels" that themselves illuminate only when they should. There are some shortcomings with OLED. The tech often struggles with extreme bright detail regions and most OLED implementations suffer from streaking, strobing and mosquito noise. SONY has yet to fix the strobing and stuttering in their OLED pro monitors. Lots of people seem to be claiming that it's been fixed, yet I worked on a brand new 24" OLED a couple weeks back and it gave me a headache -- strobing plainly visible in my peripheral vision. We also see the same with the LG and Samsung OLED HDTVs. And while they're pretty to look at, I think the Samsung full-array backlit TV's actually have a much nicer overall image and are much brighter with better detail in the highlights.

The biggest downside to OLED at this time is the production cost due to low yields. The manufacturing methods and technology need to mature some more. It is also easier to produce QD displays, and cheaper, at high DPI than OLED.

I'm actually only after a QD screen that's able to be calibrated to the standards of 709 and 2020. Like having a six-color coordination and blue only switch and HDMI 1.4 or 2.0.
Using SDI now isn't that critical, HDMI can stream all the color information needed for grading.

REC709 is an easy target to hit with any current display and all the QD displays seem to be 10bit+ natively, so I don't think that's much of an issue. As for REC2020, that remains to be seen. No one is officially supporting 2020 yet. Looks like ATSC won't adopt it as a primary implementation, even though it's currently approved, until HDMI 2.1 or 2.2 rolls around in 2016~2018.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I had my eye on OLED as a replacement for my grading LED LCD which I use at the moment for grading in Resolve. Now they announced a lot of quantum dot TV's which are much lower in price. Does anyone know any such screens that are aimed more at the video professional, so that we can calibrate the display to certain standards? Like both being able to set it to 709 for 1080p and 2020 for UHD outputs?

Nothing can hit Rec2020 yet. I think you're worrying about something that's not in the world of reality yet.

I'm very confident you'll see real Rec2020 monitors at NAB in Las Vegas in April, but when they're going to ship is a good question. And "lower in price" is not something I'd expect to see in professional monitors like this. You either have to set your sights lower, or raise your budget much higher.

 

[jake blackstone]

There are some shortcomings with OLED. The tech often struggles with extreme bright detail regions and most OLED implementations suffer from streaking, strobing and mosquito noise. SONY has yet to fix the strobing and stuttering in their OLED pro monitors. .

And do not forget the necessity of proper JUDD offset adjustment. It took a while to figure this one out, but many still not aware of it or to how to do it.

 

[Stacey Spears]

The only thing capable of 2020 are monochromatic lasers. The wave length is so narrow at the spectral locus that everyone will see different colors. As you age, the colors you see will change too. 2020 was not well thought out.

The popular 1931 color matching function does not work well with OLED or BT.2020. QD is still LCD.

At NAB you will want to check out the liquid cooled pulsar monitor from Dolby and HDR. Dolby Vision is where it is at.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

The objective is to get a wide color gamut, not complete 2020 color conformity at this stage. So you know at the limits the color and brightness tools out (or the colirdefinition.lacks complete clarity. In the former you accept that the extreme color you are left with maybe a little more extreme in real life and that rarely used in real life, in the other it is splitting hairs differences you have to look for intensely and the audience won't really notice. 2020 is about added ability at this stage rather than complete ability.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

OLED can't match 4-element LCD with an additional black masking layer. The unfortunate problem here is that even though that technology has ben demonstrated several times over multiple years, it has yet to be used in a production display. OTOH, CES this year is showing full-array backlighting for 55"+ screens from several manufacturers. They're promoting it as if it's a new thing, but it's not and I have owned full array backlit screens in the past. Edge lighting sucks balls, especially on large screens. The lighting anomalies present on my 75" Samsung are often infuriating. Saying that, there's also no reason why OLED and LCD masking techniques can't be combined to make something truly awesome... I often wonder why display makers don't just go for it and make a truly awesome display that will serve as the standard for the next 10~20 years. Instead, we're forced to endure the endless cycle of insignificant upgrades on an annual basis while they demo all kinds of cool stuff at shows like CES. Only to never actually put that cool stuff into production. Remember, the first "production" 4K TV was actually shown at CES in 2005 or 10 years ago by Samsung. Took them 8 years to start selling them and by the time they did, we got something a lot less cool. No true 4096 pixel resolution, no full-array backlighting, both of those features shown in 2005 on a 57" screen. We're seeing this now with 8K. For the past 3 years now, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba have been showing 8K TVs. Every year, they all claim their TV is the first 8K TV. Kinda funny, but it's all happened before with 4K and with 1080p before that...

OLED does have some advantages and is definitely one of the more promising display technologies as we move forward. It doesn't really have deeper blacks than what can already be achieved. But most of the good OLED screens out there do have much deeper and more detailed blacks than currently available LCD screens at or below their price point. In a nutshell, OLED does have blacks that are capable of showing more definition than a standard RGB LCD. The blacks are far easier to control as we're not trying to black out a light source behind an LCD screen, but rather having non-reflective seemingly black "pixels" that themselves illuminate only when they should. There are some shortcomings with OLED. The tech often struggles with extreme bright detail regions and most OLED implementations suffer from streaking, strobing and mosquito noise. SONY has yet to fix the strobing and stuttering in their OLED pro monitors. Lots of people seem to be claiming that it's been fixed, yet I worked on a brand new 24" OLED a couple weeks back and it gave me a headache -- strobing plainly visible in my peripheral vision. We also see the same with the LG and Samsung OLED HDTVs. And while they're pretty to look at, I think the Samsung full-array backlit TV's actually have a much nicer overall image and are much brighter with better detail in the highlights.

The biggest downside to OLED at this time is the production cost due to low yields. The manufacturing methods and technology need to mature some more. It is also easier to produce QD displays, and cheaper, at high DPI than OLED.



REC709 is an easy target to hit with any current display and all the QD displays seem to be 10bit+ natively, so I don't think that's much of an issue. As for REC2020, that remains to be seen. No one is officially supporting 2020 yet. Looks like ATSC won't adopt it as a primary implementation, even though it's currently approved, until HDMI 2.1 or 2.2 rolls around in 2016~2018.

Mammoth post Jeff. Good to see the art of the mammoth post is not dead.

If you are getting headaches from your periphial vision on a 24 inch monitor, maybe you shouldn't sit so close .

Anyway, do any of these OLED effects (except highlight issues) really matter to getting professional use results Jeff?

But his would a 4 or 6 element OLED compare to a 4 element LCD? Even if they can't get 100% accurate viable colors yet, just using a white OLED and color filters like LG does would achieve it.

I notice that often before the patent runs out, or just after, these tectechnologies turn up in consuner products. 6 element color turned up in the 90's maybe within 2 years of 4 element. Anyway, parents will run out in coming years and bluphase LCD has enough speed to sequential color 6 element, and maybe in 3D, but I forget, and it is a cheaper LCD technology.

You can get black filter technology in the cheaper UB85 LG series, but still not as good as OLED, you do get some bleed, more off angle. I can imagine it might be a passfilter tuned to narrow RGB bands, but the TV looks wonderful for consumer, other than that you have to go to an more expensive Samsung model in 4k.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If you are getting headaches from your periphial vision on a 24 inch monitor, maybe you shouldn't sit so close .

It's when the monitor is outside the primary vision area. Like when I was looking at a different screen or control surface or something else and the OLED was in my peripheral area -- strobe city. Most of my plasma displays work the same way, quite annoying.

Anyway, do any of these OLED effects (except highlight issues) really matter to getting professional use results Jeff?

Nope. Even the highlight issue is not an issue in this regard. I think the big deal with OLED is that most people are not familiar with the displays yet and they buy into a lot of the marketing and hype. There are many things -- like richer, more detailed blacks, that the OLED can do better than most LCD displays. However, the technology as a whole, in its current form, isn't truly better. It's just different. And it comes at a substantial cost over what we already have. This will of course change as OLED manufacturing becomes more reliable and more screens proliferate the market.

But his would a 4 or 6 element OLED compare to a 4 element LCD? Even if they can't get 100% accurate viable colors yet, just using a white OLED and color filters like LG does would achieve it.

LG's white OLED with color filters is just an LCD display, but they're using a white (and now R, G, B in latest prototypes) OLED light source. It makes the displays even thinner than LED models and it will be similar in cost to LED full-array back-lighting once manufacturing picks up, but will allow them to do per-pixel blanking or luma control in addition to what the LCD layers can offer. This should give the best results of anything coming in the foreseeable future. The real question is *WHEN* and *IF* it will actually make it to market in a form resembling what this tech is actually capable of.

I notice that often before the patent runs out, or just after, these tectechnologies turn up in consuner products. 6 element color turned up in the 90's maybe within 2 years of 4 element. Anyway, parents will run out in coming years and bluphase LCD has enough speed to sequential color 6 element, and maybe in 3D, but I forget, and it is a cheaper LCD technology.

I'm not a fan of sequential color anything. Samsung almost pulled it off with their last round of DLP TVs and some of the DLP projectors on the market do a reasonable job, but the only ones that [almost] completely eliminate the rainbows for me are the ones that have 6~8 color elements and enough speed to flash those colors *AT LEAST TWICE* on a 60Hz frame. IMO, sequential color needs to be cast aside, just like interlacing.

You can get black filter technology in the cheaper UB85 LG series, but still not as good as OLED, you do get some bleed, more off angle. I can imagine it might be a passfilter tuned to narrow RGB bands, but the TV looks wonderful for consumer, other than that you have to go to an more expensive Samsung model in 4k.

Most of the black filtering out there now has more to do with regional backlight control and non-reflective masking on the LCD surface to keep un-lit pixels looking as black as they can. The biggest challenge with LCD masking isn't so much the reflective nature -- and OLED has that same issue -- but to keep the backlight from bleeding through. Both Samsung and LG have shown off prototypes of displays with an additional LCD masking layer that has 256 levels of black for each pixels from complete transparent to full mask. It would cost no more to implement on their current 3-element LCD systems than what Sharp and Toshiba are already doing with their 4-element screens, and no different overall. Not sure why this isn't happening or has not happened yet. Seems like it would have been the much more logical path to follow than this regional dimming of LED edge lighting thing we have now. Ugh...

 

[Wayne Morellini]

It's when the monitor is outside the primary vision area.* Like when I was looking at a different screen or control surface or something else and the OLED was in my peripheral area -- strobe city.* Most of my plasma displays work the same way, quite annoying.

Maybe its your higher vision function Jeff.** A lot of this visual function is dependent on myline factors, and people who have certain great mental capacities in higher end jobs tend to have much more if it.* I for one did not notice probing when I tried it on peripheral vision a few days ago (I figured that was what you where getting at).

This will of course change as OLED manufacturing becomes more reliable and more screens proliferate the market.

I surmise the reason they are so for OLED is for the promise a cheap manufacture and low power consumption, and at the moment if they keep going thru fund research acquisitions to make it cheaper.* However, apart from low power for portable devices and 100QE versions, they are not reaching their cost potentials, so why continue.

LG's white OLED with color filters is just an LCD display, but they're using a white (and now R, G, B in latest prototypes) OLED light source.* It makes the displays even thinner than LED models and it will be similar in cost to LED full-array back-lighting once manufacturing picks up, but will allow them to do per-pixel blanking or luma control in addition to what the LCD layers can offer.* This should give the best results of anything coming in the foreseeable future.* The real question is *WHEN* and *IF* it will actually make it to market in a form resembling what this tech is actually capable of.[\quote]

I thought there was a version using monochrome pixels and color filters, without LCD, which is unseeded, as the big issue was color constancy over time in the color formulas.

I'm not a fan of sequential color anything.

I suspected it might be the frequency for you vision.* You might look around for a 200hz source and see if the effect disappears.* Bluphase can do 500 or 1000 fps, so has potential.

Most of the black filtering out there now has more to do with regional backlight control and non-reflective masking on the LCD surface to keep un-lit pixels looking as black as they can.* The biggest challenge with LCD masking isn't so much the reflective nature -- and OLED has that same issue -- but to keep the backlight from bleeding through.* Both Samsung and LG have shown off prototypes of displays with an additional LCD masking layer that has 256 levels of black for each pixels from complete transparent to full mask.** It would cost no more to implement on their current 3-element LCD systems than what Sharp and Toshiba are already doing with their 4-element screens, and no different overall.* Not sure why this isn't happening or has not happened yet.* Seems like it would have been the much more logical path to follow than this regional dimming of LED edge lighting thing we have now.* Ugh...

Regional dimming allows much better luminance drive of the pixels and luminance conformity across the screen, but then that is good for upmarket sets but cheaper sets only need a black filter.

I thought the LG UB85 series used a true filter?* What is the light bleed percentage of scattered frequency shifted light?** Never mind, probably too complex for them.

I think our problem is patent holders want too much for various technologies and companies can just wait it out shoving mediocre products on us.* But if they want to be the Sony Trition of their day, you need to license before it is too late and TV's get to full 2020 spec and everybody has access to the out of patent technology. They have another 6 years maybe to take advantage of patent licensing before everybody gets access to it.

If you want very cheap full spec 2020 laser performance UHD+ TV, you have opportunity to do it for sometime, I've had my design proposal on hold for several years. You can wait for them to do it, or make it happen.


Thank you Jeff

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Now I spent a number of hours looking up QD TV's at CES, and LG
has one model at least (confusing articles say all or one, but LG seems to haove a handful of new marketing terms involving different gamut enhancing technologies). TCL is selling their QD 110% NTSC outside of china now (we have had their 80 or so inch version locally for a number of months here, and it looks nice, buy not that bright!). Articles speak like Samsung is going to directly entice their QD to illuminate??

I read that Sharp, apparently (writers need to learn to write more clearly), has color bleed issues. I was really hoping for a Sharp QP with QD and no color bleed. But no go. Sharp's LCD tech with these added festures should have given them a top opportunity to be a top hrsjd again, instead we get this stuff after x years a waiting.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

I suspected it might be the frequency for you vision.* You might look around for a 200hz source and see if the effect disappears.

Sequential color based image display (DLP, Laser TV) is more tasking for the viewer because the whole image is never displayed and brain has to put additional effort in combining multiple elements into a single image. Similar principle with active 3D.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Not really Hrvoje. They are trying to expose all colors within the exposure time if the human eye, except different people have different exposure times. It is like old CRT monitors, increase the frame rate enough people stopped noticing the flicker, usually by 70hz or so. With more full use of exposure time it is not as noticeable. However people also adapt to it. I can turn the light off here, and see black shimmering grey at 50hz sometimes, my brain is auto gain adjusting for the light flicker. However your periphial vision works at higher frame rates. Anyway the rainbow issue is because (I belueve) your eye is scanning across an image revealing distinct disjoint color data. At high enough frequency that should not matter much unless very bright and you are looking with periphial vision. Maybe the effect will dissapear for Jeff by 200fps.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

If the flicker rate is too low it puts a strain on the viewer.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Not really Hrvoje. They are trying to expose all colors within the exposure time if the human eye, except different people have different exposure times. It is like old CRT monitors, increase the frame rate enough people stopped noticing the flicker, usually by 70hz or so.

We are talking about different things.

"Exposure time" you are referring to is related to persistence of vision, which is related to ability to distinguish separate images, interpret motion and perceive strobing. Regarding this, tests on pilots have shown temporal sensitivity to above 200 fps.

Eyes do not have refresh rate. Optical nerve impulse triggering is in picosecond range.

Sequential color images (projected at any speed) turn into neural flow of data and brain has to combine them into a single image. Regardless of the ability to consciously perceive strobing or rainbow effect.