A Billion-Color Display

The Future of Things covered the introduction last month of HP's DreamColor display, with 30 bits/pixel, developed in conjunction with DreamWorks Animation. The display is aimed at the video production, animation, and graphic arts industries. HP promises blacker blacks and whiter whites — though TFoT quotes one source who notes that if they deliver this, it will be due to the back-lighting and not to the number of bits/pixel. No word on the size of the displays that will actually be delivered, or on the price.

To what end?

[Eudial]

Is it really possible to improve screens further, in a way that's visible to the naked eye? It's the same with high end audio system. I sure can't tell the difference between a mid price-range audio system and a bleeding edge $50,000 system.

My point is that 24 bpp ought to be enough for anyone.

Re:To what end?

[gEvil (beta)]

And yet that 24bpp can't reproduce the full range of colors that can be printed on a piece of paper. And the ink on that piece of paper can't reproduce the full range of colors visible to the naked eye. Yes, there's room for a whole lot of improvement. That's not to discount the progress we've already made (24bpp is pretty impressive), but there's still a long way to go.

Re:Great

[$random_var]

I know you're jesting, but our eyes are definitely capable of appreciating 30 bits, and many megapixels as well. Our eyes don't work like cameras; we're excellent at discriminating fine differences within the area we're looking at. We might not be able to tell #cc1111 from #cd1111 in isolation, but if they're right next to each other we can see that difference and more.

(On a similar note, in the center of our visual field, we can discriminate physical positions with much greater accuracy than the receptor density would lead one to believe, because our analog receptors are capable of discerning fine differences by working with their neighboring receptors. So anybody who says "X resolution is higher than humans can see" is talking out of his ass. You can tell when they know what they're talking about when they say something like "at this resolution, most humans will only be able to perceive a 1-pixel difference 60% of the time" or something which sounds a lot more like signal theory than somebody comparing one arbitrary number to another arbitrary number.)

Re:I'd like to see a double-blind test...

[icegreentea]

Get a 1024 pixel high/wide image. And then make a perfect white-black gradient. You should be able to tell between the two. As someone else pointed out, you only have 256 greys, so you end up with one grey forming a 4 pixel band (which is noticeable). The new displace will have one grey per pixel.. much harder to tell.

Re:It's just a shame that..

[mccalli]

.. video codecs used in consumer video systems (even H.264/Blu-Ray) do not have such high color depth. So what's the point?

And of course, video codecs have been perfected now and will never, ever change or improve. You're right - we should all just pack up and go home, it's all been done.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:To what end?

[davolfman]

I'd just be happy if the manufacturers told me the panel technology in the specs so I could avoid 6-bit TN displays.

As it is, 10 bit displays are nothing new. Photographers have been swearing by them for years as they allow for the response curve of the display to be corrected without dipping below 256 displayable tones per channel. Of course the real solution is just to get someone to manufacture CRTs again. For this kind of market an analog display technology has a serious advantage in that there are no rounding errors.

Re:To what end?

[somersault]

Reminds me of one of the couple of times I went scuba diving in the sea. I don't think I've ever seen colours so bright as some of the plants on the bottom of the sea bed that day (and this was on a dull stormy day in west-coast Scotland, which is hardly very exotic!). When you take stuff like stones and weeds out of the water suddenly they look very dull.. I wonder what the difference is.. maybe something to do with the refraction of the light going from the water to the glass to air into my eyeballs upping the contrast or something? :P

Re:Slashdot is a homo think-tank

[lennyhell]

Are you stupid or what? I always post as myself. I am myself. And I'm very insightful.

Re:Great

[Malekin]

You need two numbers though: separation (dots per inch) and distance to the image.

You only need one number: angular resolution. 300dpi at 1m (which is about the accepted upper limit) is about 17 arcseconds, if I got my math right.

It's naÃve to treat the human vision system like a camera. The two things are very different.

Re:To what end?

[sjames]

No amount of zooming will make your eyes capable of telling the difference between 30 and 24 bit/pixel color.

Re:To what end?

[evanbd]

On the contrary. Go create a single-color or grayscale smooth one-dimensional gradient on a large-ish image (1024x1024 or so). It will show clear evidence of banding at 8 bits per channel, since there are only 256 color levels available.

This will be substantially reduced if everything were properly dithered, but in normal software and normal displays it is not.

How worth it is I don't know, but there is absolutely an easily detectable difference. How about testing your hypothesis before claiming you know what you're talking about, hmm? It's not exactly a difficult experiment to carry out.