GEAR. VISUALS
“Improving the ability of our displays to fulfil existing standards is one thing, but improving the standards is another”
Similar overall black-level and brightness numbers can be had from a far less expensive display using local backlight dimming, caveated by at least some halation, particularly around high-contrast features. Some algorithms used by SmallHD in its Vision series make the approach work shockingly well. There are still OLED displays in manufacture and they often find a home in post, albeit few achieving the four-digit brightness levels required for precision HDR. The alternative, and one found in many cinema-oriented grading suites, is a projection display – but even in cinema, there are very early signs of alternatives emerging. THE FUTURE The big change on the horizon is MicroLED. The term isn‘t that well defined, referring to anything from extant displays that look like coarse plasma screens, all the way up to high-resolution designs which might be world-beaters once they make it out of the lab. Sony’s Crystal LED wall, recently installed in its own London-based virtual production facility, is an example of the coarser type, much as it is a competitive LED wall technology. MicroLED is a technology which Apple is famously interested in, having assembled a research project in Taiwan that’s reportedly less than a year from turning out usable parts. Recent lab developments have achieved thousands of DPI – that’s much sharper than most LCDs. Given that many on-camera monitors inherit their display panels from smartphones, that bodes well, though it’s not clear that Apple will be keen to release its exclusive iPhone technology for other applications. Nothing remains exclusive forever, of course, but the idea of bringing some of the best parts of video wall performance to TVs and monitors is probably still a while away. The newness of the process creates manufacturing challenges, but in an ideal world, microLED might solve some of the most pressing problems of monitoring in general.
Square demonstration room has introduced people to the realities of projected HDR, though the jet-black décor says something about the requirements of doing it. Like most other kinds of HDR – used with a light touch – it’s hard to dislike, but the attractiveness of LED video walls, which are at least black by default, is clear. Cinema chains have typically been cautious over issues of cost and maintainability, though, alongside concerns about Making cinemas projector-less would be convenient. Putting the same tech into grading suites could also save significant space. That’s a real boon in the expensive city-centre locations where post- production facilities tend to exist. Post, particularly HDR finishing, demands lots of display technology. LCDs can be made brighter with more backlight, but that tends to boost black levels. OLEDs were long expected to solve that problem and others – and they may yet – though Sony has moved away from OLED for its highest- end monitors, using dual-layer LCDs in the BVM-HX310 and the new 3110. Here, every triplet of red, green and blue LCD sub-pixels is backed by a single monochrome pixel, controlling the backlight level for each pixel. Similar (or perhaps identical) technology exists in the Eizo CG3146, and there are closely competing options from TVLogic and Flanders Scientific. Those are the no-compromise solutions, with price tags to match. loudspeaker placement. PRECISION IN POST
BEYOND HDR HDR is popular. What’s less often discussed is that it generally goes hand in hand with improvements to colour capability, something that film purists can accurately point to as a lingering benefit of the photochemical world. Improving the ability of our displays to fulfil existing standards is one thing, but improving the standards is another. The idea behind 6P Color (see 6pcolor.com) is more or less what it sounds like: instead of three primaries, there are six – the better to reproduce all the colours the human eye can handle. Demonstrations have been put together by superimposing the output of several projectors through filters, though trade show examples have so far included just one extra primary, a cyan-turquoise colour, built into a video wall panel, presumably because that’s a relatively inexpensive way to prototype the approach. The improved ability to differentiate deep shades of blue-green present a marked improvement over things like Rec. 709, and even the improved
NEXT FRONTIER LED wall panel technology, as seen at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, is where the most advanced display technology is utilised
64. DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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