New LCD Technology Outperforms CRT

[Heinz68]

Finally it looks like true CRT replacement.
No big news for some LCD owners, they argue at many forums having LCD with better IQ than CRT already, for a long time.:)
The new 40" true 1080p display should be available by Q4 of this year and most likely out off my price range :)
DAILYTECH, Tuan Nguyen - June 14, 2006 1:00 PM
LCD panels have traditionally been lagging behind CRT monitors in terms of color response, saturation, accuracy and overall black-level response. Because LCDs are "always lit" by a backlight, deep dark blacks have been the Achilles heel of LCD technology. However, a company named eCinema Systems has announced a new LCD technology that it claims surpasses CRT in virtually every respect.

eCinema's new LCD technology is being called high dynamic range LCD, and also supports "deep color", which is higher than 24-bit color, starting at 30-bit or 36-bit and can go up to 48-bit. The new panels are able to display 36-bit color (12-bits per color channel), and 1000 to 4000 step gray-scales, producing fantastic gradients. Most LCDs today produce only 256 gray steps at most. This new "deep color" technology will be standard with the new HDMI 1.3 specification. What's most spectacular about eCinema's LCD display however, is its contrast ratio: 30,000:1. At this rating, eCinema's new DCM40HDR panel can achieve black levels that even CRTs cannot match. eCinema CEO Martin Euredjian said: Read more at DAILYTECH (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=2860)

[Superfly]

nice, now all we need is about 3 years to fly by so that I can actually afford one.!!!

[slaWter]

I would like to see a price.

[Muppet]

Sounds bloody expensive, nice but expensive

[Heinz68]

nice, now all we need is about 3 years to fly by so that I can actually afford one.!!!It shouldn't take OWA so long to get one or two :)

[Son Goku]

Still does leave the question about native resolutions and what sorta effect one might have moving away from it.

Given that not everyone will always have the lattest gfx card, or be able to play every game at a high native resolution, people might still end up having to lower the res... Some games, though the one's that come to mind also have like 800x600 hard coded into the program, or have that as a max supported res

[einstein_314]

I'm curious to know what benifit having 48bit colour would be...I mean... 24 bit colour is 16.7 million different colours. And the human eye can only distinguish what?, 7 million of those? 48bit is 281.5 quadrillion colours :bugeyes: overkill? I think so. I mean, even 36 bit is 68.7 trillion colours. That's a lot of colours.

[Toss3]

Are they talking about SED here? :o http://gear.ign.com/articles/679/679235p1.html

And get this - craziest of all, the final SEDs will ship with a contrast ratio of 100,000:1 to one[...]

[retsam]

yep, sed FTW!!!

[Zelda_fan]

no, SED is different than this

[harl]

no, SED is different than this

But they really didn't say anithing about this tecnology.
They only said, it'ts good, but not anything about how it works.

By the way, they didn't mention response time and I'm afraid
that means high response time.

I will whait for the reviews and/or analisys for some info ...

[slaWter]

Yes SED is a killer. Are they still scheduled for a 2006 release? I heard something about 2008.

[Riptide]

AFAIK SED isn't going to be out until at least 2007. So figure minimum 2008 before it's price competitive.

[tieros]

Can't be SED. They mentioned it's new LCD technology. Maybe something like Brightside? http://www.brightsidetech.com/

[nemecb]

I'm curious to know what benifit having 48bit colour would be...I mean... 24 bit colour is 16.7 million different colours. And the human eye can only distinguish what?, 7 million of those? 48bit is 281.5 quadrillion colours :bugeyes: overkill? I think so. I mean, even 36 bit is 68.7 trillion colours. That's a lot of colours.
Probably just a marketing ploy. A good LCD these days doesn't have visible banding so their thing about only 256 steps of gray is a crock. On the other hand I do recall hearing that Carmack wanted higher than 24 bit color so that there was less rounding error when manipulating colors or something.

[harl]

Probably just a marketing ploy. A good LCD these days doesn't have visible banding so their thing about only 256 steps of gray is a crock. On the other hand I do recall hearing that Carmack wanted higher than 24 bit color so that there was less rounding error when manipulating colors or something.

That's only in the rendering pipeline, like un HDR FP16 al calculations and
roundings are made in FP16 per componente instear of Int8 and are
rounded to Int8 for the display.
The idea is rounding once instead of rounding in every step of the pipe

[superklye]

Still does leave the question about native resolutions and what sorta effect one might have moving away from it.

Given that not everyone will always have the lattest gfx card, or be able to play every game at a high native resolution, people might still end up having to lower the res... Some games, though the one's that come to mind also have like 800x600 hard coded into the program, or have that as a max supported res
How many people with crappy graphics cards do you know that have a 24" widescreen monitor?

I'm going to assume the answer is "none."

So why would you think that all these people are suddenly going to go and spend how many thousands of dollars on a 40" when 24" is already unnecessary for them?

[Dr Zoidberg]

That screen is a bunch of crap compared to a true HDR television:
http://www.brightsidetech.com/

[CaptNKILL]

That screen is a bunch of crap compared to a true HDR television:
http://www.brightsidetech.com/
Best name ever. :D

So, Zoidberg... have you gone for a scuttle lately?

Woopwoopwoopwoopwoop...

(heh, OT)

[havox]

That screen is a bunch of crap compared to a true HDR television:
http://www.brightsidetech.com/

I thought it is the Same thing since they are calling it HDR LCD as well & has same spec except the contrast ratio is 30000:1 instead of 200000:1.
http://www.ecinemasys.com/products/d...cm23_specs.htm
Unfortunately it still has 15ms of response which means it would still have blur :\

I really don't know how all those people who bought LCD's can stand the blur! I cant stand it my self it hurt my eyes bad specially when playing FPS games even on the lowest response time LCD out there!

[Son Goku]

How many people with crappy graphics cards do you know that have a 24" widescreen monitor?

I'm going to assume the answer is "none."

So why would you think that all these people are suddenly going to go and spend how many thousands of dollars on a 40" when 24" is already unnecessary for them?

Crappy is a relative term. What's more, some people do prefer to stagger their upgrades, rather then do everything at once. Makes it a lot easier to "save up", when one isn't trying to buy everything under the sun, on a given pay check.

Point is, some people could still be running a Radeon 9x00 or GF 6800 GT, let along not having SLI, and for whatever reason be in the market for a new monitor first. However, and all said, the old monitor, though maybe not widescreen could be a 21 or 24" CRT that has a few years on it ;)

Some good pieces of equipment, which are well cared for, can also last a bit :D

From some indications, games like Oblivian, one doesn't exactly have to have some old crappy S3 Virge decelerator, to notice a frame rate hit from a card that isn't all that old either. Definitely if one were trying to run at a native res of 1600 or higher...

[Son Goku]

I'm curious to know what benifit having 48bit colour would be...I mean... 24 bit colour is 16.7 million different colours. And the human eye can only distinguish what?, 7 million of those? 48bit is 281.5 quadrillion colours :bugeyes: overkill? I think so. I mean, even 36 bit is 68.7 trillion colours. That's a lot of colours.

One should be careful with blanket statements about what the human eye can/can't see. 32-bit RGBA, also means only 8 bits per color channel, and some ends of the spectrum, people's eyes can have a bit more distinguishability on. Not all eyes are the same either, as some have varying forms of color blindness, and others have greater then average color aquity.

Actually, I have another one, which might somewhat surprise some, but there is some basis for.

Lets just say, that on average, human vision is said to range from wavelenths of 400-700 nm, aka violet to red. However, it has been known, that this isn't absolute, and for this reason some spectrometers have been extended to view from 390-750 nm, with a scale for it, precisely because some people's vision has been shown (from what was indicated) to extend a little further out.

Lets just say that I'm taking a photonics class now, and prior to getting in experiments with lasers and stuff (which we'll begin next week), we were looking at spectral lines for various materials and such. Much like when I was in high school, I clearly did notice some spectrographic lines through the eye piece that extended down towards 390 nm, though it wasn't quite as bright as some others, and I noticed another spectrographic line up around 705... The lab tech also confirmed, and the teacher didn't dismiss it at all.

He was like "yeah, you can be seeing that. Each eye as an optical detector can very ever so slightly, so yes it is not unheard of for someone to have a bit of a broader spectrum, in their eye site..." +/- 10 nm from the average is definitely possible. Anyhow, the implication is that I do, and I saw this in high school chemistry as well as now in photonics, see the extremely near infra-red and ultra-violet, though I don't know it's more then 10 nm either way... Moral of the story, our eyes can very ever so slightly :D

[slaWter]

That's expensive!
http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=34502

[Heinz68]

I'm curious to know what benifit having 48bit colour would be...I mean... 24 bit colour is 16.7 million different colours. And the human eye can only distinguish what?, 7 million of those? 48bit is 281.5 quadrillion colours :bugeyes: overkill? I think so. I mean, even 36 bit is 68.7 trillion colours. That's a lot of colours.
I do see this argument about "human eye can only distinguish 7 million colors" being repeated by many on many forums, most off the time when there is an argument whether CRT or LCD is better monitor.
I'm not expert on this and was just wondering who is right so did some Google and it looks like it's not so simple like some people like to make it sound.
I found this site visualexpert.com (http://www.visualexpert.com/FAQ/Part2/cfaqPart2.html) and they look like being expert on colors and what people can see and what monitors displays.
It's a huge 6 parts (page) essay with many questions answered if anybody likes to read all.
Here I only copied 2 questions from Part 2
2.1 How many colors can the eye distinguish?
There are several ways to answer this question. The most precise method is to place colors side-by-side and ask whether they appear the same or different. Using this technique, several sources (Halsey and Chapanis, 1951; Kaiser and Boynton, 1989) concluded that under best conditions, there are about one million distinguishable colors - combinations of hue, saturation and brightness. Other estimates, however, put the number as high as 7 million (Chapanis, 1954).
In less optimized conditions, the number of discriminable colors is probably much smaller and depends on hardware. In addition, a CRT screens can’t produce a large percentage of the visually perceptible colors. Technical references sometimes say that there 50,000 discriminable CRT colors, but it is unclear where this number originated. The lowest estimate I’ve seen is 20,000.

2.2 Then how come my documentation says that I can create 16.7 million colors?
You can’t. A 24 bit RGB system does not create 16.7 million colors; it simply creates 16.7 million (256 x 256 x 256) different machine states. Remember, color is manufactured in the head, not the machine. Even assuming that it is creating 16.7 million different spectral compositions (sets of wavelengths), it does not follow that the computer produces 16.7 million distinguishably different colors:
The eye does not distinguish 16.7 million different colors, anyway.
A CRT monitor can’t produce all of the million colors that the eye can distinguish. Specifically, computer and TV screens can’t produce the most saturated colors. Moreover, ambient light falling on the screen further lowers saturation and shrinks the number of colors which the display can produce.
Even within the range of color that it can produce, 24 bits still quantizes the color space too coarsely in some regions. Colors may jump by more than one JND (just noticeable difference step) because discriminability is not uniform throughout the RGB color space of monitors.
In sum, many of the 16.7 million states produce indistinguishable colors while there are many of the million distinguishable colors which "true color" can’t produce.

And here about Truecolor at wikipedia.org (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truecolor)

[|MaguS|]

Yay! So we finally will have an LCD Technology that will rival CRTs and it will be worth it in 10 years cosidering that cost... so CRT still has a long way untill its topped.

/hugs his FW900