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:To what end?

[moosesocks]

Modern monitors use an additive method of color blending, while printers (by their very nature) must use subtractive blending.

The range of colors that can be reproduced by a 24-bit RGB device is always going to be different from the range of colors that a 24-bit CMY device can reproduce.

By the same note, a 24-bit RGB display can produce colors that the CMY printer cannot.

One color space isn't bigger than the other; they're simply different. Once you increase the bit-depth far enough to encompass the full spectrum of visible light for both color spaces, the distinction can finally be dropped.

Mod parent (or his sibling) up... however,...

[Animaether]

They're absolutely right that CMYK does not encompass RGB. They overlap for a large part, and don't overlap in small areas (with one larger area in the deep vivid cyans).

However, a larger bitdepth doesn't do anything for color space. It simply determines the granularity of that color space. If with 16 bit you get 65,536 individual colors within the RGB gamut (with slightly higher granularity in the green channel, typically), and with 24bit you get 16,777,216 individual possible colors within the RGB gamut, then with 30 bit (10 bit per channel; it's not new, really), you get 1,073,741,824 individual possible colors... but still within the RGB gamut (of the device at hand).

An HDR display (either by using a very bright backlight or more localized LED backlights control, etc.) also doesn't change the gamut of that device - it simply allows for much brighter values of them.

Now, if they were to make an LCD panel that aside from the R,G,B pixel elements also had C M Y pixel elements, then you most certainly could increase the gamut. It would also be much more difficult to switch to than a simple bitdepth change.

Re:

[moosesocks]

Now, if they were to make an LCD panel that aside from the R,G,B pixel elements also had C M Y pixel elements, then you most certainly could increase the gamut. It would also be much more difficult to switch to than a simple bitdepth change.

That would make no sense on an LCD display, given that CMY is a subtractive color model, whilst color is achieved on LCDs via additive blending.

Although adding another "primary" color should increase your gamut, CMY might not be the best choice of colors to use in that case.

Think of RGB mixing is analogous to shining three different-colored flashlights at a white target, the complete overlap [wikipedia.org] of which should also be white.

CMY color mixing is analogous to taking three different colored sheets of glass, and l

Re:

[cheater512]

With OLED displays, adding more colours should become a lot easier.

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[toddestan]

I would think it would be easiest with LCDs, since all you would need to change is the dye/filter layer that goes over the pixels. Probably would work best with CCFL backlights, since they have a fuller spectrum.

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[blincoln]

However, a larger bitdepth doesn't do anything for color space.

Actually, it does.

A higher bit depth means that the maximum contrast between channels is greater, *because* you have more resolution (or granularity, if you like) in each channel.

For a very obvious example of this, take a 24-bit RGB colour image and downconvert it to 16-bit. The difference between 8 bits per channel and 5 (or 6 for green, depending on the type of 16-bit encoding) is quite dramatic. It's why older 3D games tend to look washed out

Re:

[blincoln]

Hello, ignorant user who modded me "overrated". Maybe you should research the topic before you assume I'm incorrect.

Higher bit depth increases the maximum difference in value between channels. This is simple math. This increases the colour space because it means that the brightest value for each channel can be set higher on the display system without making *everything* appear too bright/saturated.

Think of it this way - if I have only four bits per channel, then I only get 16 steps in between black and full

Re:

[Carewolf]

Increasing the bit-depth will not be enough. The human eye sees way more than 3 colors, most are mapped to a 3-color space in the brain but a couple stand out. So we need a color-space with more than RGB to get closer to human vision. Most important are visible infrared and visible ultraviolet. These are needed for low light vision and glow effects, and without them you will never be able to see what is going on in Doom 4. Also to fix low light the bit-space should be made logarithmic, you can't see the dif

8 minute abs

[goombah99]

It take HP 30 bits to show color? Ha! my old Apple II could do it in just 8 bits. HP has a lot of catching up to do.

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[toddestan]

It take HP 30 bits to show color? Ha! my old Apple II could do it in just 8 bits. HP has a lot of catching up to do.

I'm not impressed. My old IBM could do color with just 4 bits.

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[RalphBNumbers]

Afaik, the fact that a 24bbp display can't reproduce all visible colors has more to do with the fact that the display's pixels are made up of 3 monochromatic sub-pixels than the fact that there are 8-bits of information for each of those sub-pixels. Just adding 2 extra bits for each of those 3 colors isn't going to do much in terms of spectrum coverage iirc.

I'd actually be interested in seeing research into displays that didn't use distinct pixels at all, and instead went with something like a bayer patter

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[evanbd]

Your eye only has 3 color sensors. Therefore you can reproduce any spectrum in a way that your eye will see as equivalent with only 3 color elements. That said, RGB doesn't do a perfect job of this -- there are some colors at the edges of the color space that your eye can see that RGB can't produce.

Now, it's entirely possible that the easiest way to produce the full spectrum when it comes to actually building a display is with more than 3 different color elements, but 3 is sufficient if they're the righ

Re:

[RalphBNumbers]

You're almost right... which is to say, wrong.
There are 3 types of cone receptors, and 3 numbers is sufficient to describe any color the human eye can perceive, but those 3 numbers can not represent actual physical colors.

Your cones do not just detect one monochromatic color, each type has it's own response curve across varying frequencies, and they're not even nice simple bell curves (one even has two peaks). To represent the entire visible color space with 3 numbers, as the CIE 1931 XYZ color space does [wikipedia.org],

Re:

[rrohbeck]

FWIW, some women have 4 different receptors. One of the receptor pigments is encoded on the X chromosome so women can have two different types. See the Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] article as usual.

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[MaWeiTao]

Actually, the color gamut for CMYK is generally smaller than RGB. A CMYK print out on its own looks perfectly fine, but place it beside a computer monitor or an actual photo and suddenly the colors look a bit muted and in some cases slightly off. Depending on the nature of a particular project there sometimes is a lot of work involved in getting CMYK-based colors to look right.

One limitation with current displays in reproducing true to life color is that the image is being reproduced by a light source. And

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[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 uppin

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[mikael]

The red and green ranges of the spectrum are reduced under seawater. So you see a higher contrast in the blue range. M

It's the same with pebbles - when they are dry, they are just stones, but once wet, light greys become black, and you see all the specks and lines of minerals.

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[somersault]

Aye, I'd noticed the same of pebbles, they look better at the beach :P I got some nice polished marble stones so that I don't have to keep them wet all the time.. thanks for the info about under the sea. I remember the green being especially vivid for some reason though.

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[smallfries]

There are two main ways to improve over a standard system and the summary sounds as if they've done both. The contrast range on a normal screen is in the order of 500:1. On a bright sunny day outdoors our eyes pick up contrast ratios that are 1000s of times larger. The claim about blacker blacks and whiter whites will be a reference to High Dynamic Range.

Once you increase the range of colours that you are going to display it means the gaps between distinct colours become larger and so more bits are required

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[ceoyoyo]

Not in 30 bits they haven't. That's only 10 bits per channel (compared to 8 in a regular screen). There's a reason you don't see 10 bit floating point numbers much.

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[smallfries]

That's not true (that you don't see small floating point - I assume that you're correct about these guys). If you read some of the literature on tone mapping they use small floating point formats. The reason being that although the eye is good at picking out graduations in colour over small ranges, when it is over a larger range the smaller graduations are ignored. Ie you get the same degradation in precision for larger magnitudes that floating point exhibits.

The best working guesses for this behaviour are

Come back after you've turned off anti-aliasing.

[nobodyman]

Is it really possible to improve screens further, in a way that's visible to the naked eye?

I think so. As a quick example of why I think this, temporarily turn off anti-aliasing in your OS. The characters on the screen should look pretty crappy relative to a book or an illustration. So, I think we have a ways to go. I think the same is true for color depth, it's just hard to recognize it because we have gotten used to 8 bits/pixel.

Most new displays have a resolution of 96dpi, whereas low-end printers can easily pull off 300dpi. Same goes for color-depth. Black and White screen images at 8 bits/pixel simply cant match the range of black&white print & film.

When you think about it, techniques such as anti-aliasing are really just hacks to work around the limitations of today's monitors. If monitors could pull off 300dpi, you wouldn't need anti-aliasing.

Re:Come back after you've turned off anti-aliasing

[Animaether]

Displays can already do a much higher DPI - some handhelds with 3" screens can do 800x600. That's 2.4" along the length, for 800dots/2.4" = 333.33333etc. DPI.

However, imagine a full size 17" widescreen (16:10) at a DPI of 300. 17" is about 14.4" wide by 9" high. 14.4*300 = 4320, 9*300 = 2700. A 4320x2700 display? Crikey. I'm sure we'll get there eventually, but at the resolution rate we're currently seeing - not for some time aside from high end displays.

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[Jeff DeMaagd]

There are different forms of antialiasing. The ClearType used by Windows really gets me. Yes, it does make the shapes smother, but what it does is turn the edges into rainbows. Instead of the right edge of a shape being a consistent color, and the left edge of a shape being a consistent color, it could be any of three colors anywhere. But it is the sharpest form of antialiasing for text.

Re:Come back after you've turned off anti-aliasing

[phasm42]

The ClearType used by Windows really gets me. Yes, it does make the shapes smother, but what it does is turn the edges into rainbows.

This may be due to your monitor not being specified correctly. IIRC, there are two main types of LCD panels: RGB and BGR (different color orders), and in order for ClearType to work correctly, it has to know which one you're using. I've noticed if someone does a non-lossy screen capture of some ClearType text on a computer set up for the opposite sub-pixel color order than what I use, the text looks crappy and has that rainbow effect.

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[cnettel]

The ClearType used by Windows really gets me. Yes, it does make the shapes smother, but what it does is turn the edges into rainbows.

This may be due to your monitor not being specified correctly. IIRC, there are two main types of LCD panels: RGB and BGR (different color orders), and in order for ClearType to work correctly, it has to know which one you're using. I've noticed if someone does a non-lossy screen capture of some ClearType text on a computer set up for the opposite sub-pixel color order than what I use, the text looks crappy and has that rainbow effect.

Another aspect is screen pivoting, analog connection and/or aggressive contrast enhancement in GPU or monitor.

Re:To what end?

[Divebus]

Is it really possible to improve screens further, in a way that's visible to the naked eye?

Just as in audio where quantizing becomes a problem only in very low level passages, fine greyscale, especially in the blackest image areas, will benefit from more bits/pixel.

For example, an ordinary CD (16 bits) can sound rather gritty on quiet recordings such as the low level passages of classical music. That's because you're probably only using two or three bits of sample depth down there. To combat the issue, 24 bit audio will elevate the sample depth everywhere but will show itself best at low levels. Dither (essentially noise) is used to randomize and mask the problem, but that's a cheat.

In video, fine greyscale performance comes from higher bit depth per pixel and is visible throughout the entire luminance range. The issue shows itself on flat (un-textured) areas with minute lighting changes across the surface, like a softly lit painted wall. You'll see annular rings on the surface as the bit values step through their range. Again, dither may be used to randomize the quantized transitions.

24 bit video is really 8 bits per primary color - so it's not that good to start with. In professional application, it's not unusual to work with 10 bit [per channel] or even up to 16 bit[per channel] images, mostly to be more friendly to post production.

Fortunately, analog humans are fairly blind to minute color changes. Unfortunately, our system of digital video happily shows you everything wrong with it.

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[moosesocks]

Although today's monitors are fairly good at color reproduction, they could easily benefit from extra dynamic range, which LCDs have never been particularly good at. Although the article lacks technical depth, it can be inferred that the extra 6 bits will be used as an alpha channel, to adjust the brightness of each pixel, which should comfortably solve the dynamic range problem once and for all if it works.

Similarly, in the visual arts industry, it is absolutely necessary for an image on the screen to loo

Re:

[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 ar

Re:

[The Master Control P]

If you want a good CRT, you can buy a GDM-W900 or W900F on ebay or craigslist - they're absolutely professional grade displays and the image is a wonder to behold. I've plugged my laptop in to the mine's second input before; The difference in color saturation is stunning.

Unfortunately, we all have the same problem regadless of our monitor technology. It can either have black be truly black and get it's full dynamic range, or we can work in a room with a normal level of illumination.

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[DAldredge]

How many shades of gray can that 24 bit display show? Hint - the answer is 254.

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[dabraun]

You are assuming that it can actually display "black" and "white" and I assure you it can not.

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[ceoyoyo]

Not really. I've seen some 12-bit grayscale monitors. They used to buy them for the radiologists. Most of the radiologists now use regular (good quality, but still 24-bpp) LCDs. The contrast ratio on a monitor is MUCH more important. Contrast ratio expands the colour gamut while increased bit depth just lets you move through your existing gamut in smaller steps.

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[mikael]

Higher dot pitches, more bits per pixel sample (even floating-point displays, higher contrast between black and white colors, larger framebuffer resolution, larger monitor size, 3D focus-to-infinity/stereo views without the need for headsets.

Maybe even laptops with twin LCD displays, that could be folded outwards, along with a keyboard with a foldout numeric keypad.

Couple of things

[Sycraft-fu]

The first is to improve grey scale. Your eyes are extremely sensitive to changes in luminescence. As such we can see grey scale gradients with great precision. 256 levels (which is what 8 bits per channel gets you) just isn't enough. There are already grayscale medical displays out that do 1024 greys (10-bit).

Then of course there's the problem of wider gamut and wider dynamic range displays. Right now most displays show a fairly small subset of the total amount of colours humans can perceive, and also have

Re:

[colmore]

Different people have different needs.

I'm assuming that if Dreamworks is making this request then it is because their guys have a use for it. I'm at least curious.

But no,

"I have no need for this! It shouldn't exist!"

that makes more sense.

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[im_thatoneguy]

Dead wrong.

Load Gimp, Photoshop or any other program.

Grab the gradient tool.

Select the colors [0,0,0] and [10,10,10]. Now create canvas as wide as your screen and create a gradient.

It'll look like you have 10 giant blocks. Now it still faces the same problem of delivering to 24 bpp displays for DVD but most LCDs have problem with even displaying 24bpp correctly. 30 will be headroom to ensure that at the very least the 24bpp will be rendered correctly.

Also the film and VFX company LARGELY works in 36

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[AbRASiON]

Is it possible, IS IT POSSIBLE?
You're actually asking is it possible, really?

This whole damned video display industry, from TV to computers to god knows what has gone 20 years backwards in display quality, ever since the LCD 'won' and the average consumer decided they preferred convenience and desk space over picture quality.

At the slow rate we're going at now, we might just have black levels and the colour reproduction of a basic, cheap CRT in about 5 years, maybe in 10 years time we might finally have a f

Re:To what end?

[Harmonious Botch]

Also, "well the old one is all people should need" is never an excuse to stop innovating.

Yes, you should have your eyeballs upgaded immediately!

Re:To what end?

[Torvaun]

I did, with clear plastic add-ons. I've got a friend who went with the laser upgrade.

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[Harmonious Botch]

And you see more colors now?

Re:To what end?

[Torvaun]

Nope, just higher resolution.

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[cheater512]

I thought we had decided the whole Gillette thing wasnt innovating? :P
This is just adding more detail to the colours.

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[HateBreeder]

instead direct our inovative talents at something new.

You know, these are all parallel efforts. Different people have different interests, and the people who will innovate screen design can't just "divert" their talent towards, say, stem cell research.

Some people, don't want or simply can't innovate.. so would you suggest they just stop whatever it is they're doing because we "don't need" any more incremental improvements?

From my point of view... every little helps and this is not waste. Having them doing nothing would be a waste.

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[dgatwood]

Flat panels today almost all suck at color reproduction. It's rare to even approach 24-bit color. My laptop is, I believe, an 18-bit panel. You can see massive banding if you look at anything with gradients. They use those cheap panels not because of cost but because they have better contrast than panels with more accurate color. If they can get the contrast ratio to something even halfway usable with 30-bit color, we'll see 24-bit color with enough contrast to be used in real-world environments. If

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[Haeleth]

Flat panels today almost all suck at color reproduction. It's rare to even approach 24-bit color.

Actually, it's easy to get 24-bit colour: don't use a laptop, and don't use the cheapest type of panel. Everything else has genuine 24-bit colour, and there are plenty of people selling excellent 24-bit flat panels at surprisingly good prices -- even mass-market companies like Dell.

My laptop is, I believe, an 18-bit panel.

Yes, all laptops seem to use TN film displays. I believe the reason is more to do with po

Re:

[kesuki]

"when they see that a certain manufacturer offers a 24" widescreen for $350 and another 24" widescreen for $700"

What drives me nuts is that you can get a 40" display for about $1,000 eg: a HDTV... why would a person spend $750 for a 24" monitor, when for $250 more dollars they can get a monitor AND a next gen TV set all rolled into one? AFAIK all the HDTV sets are 24-bit color, and they're still a better value than a normal monitor.

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[sydbarrett74]

If you don't like it, don't buy it. People can innovate in whatever field they want. The fact that you don't approve is utterly irrelevant.

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[UncleTogie]

Especially when you consider that black is not black on most monitors.

Unless they've a backlight for each individual pixel, black still won't be black on this monitor, either...

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[KiloByte]

If you're doing graphics, you often have to make edits on tiny things that aren't perceptually different unless you're zoomed really far in but have an impact on things as a whole.

Yeah, but you don't need these displayed. Having the in-memory image have a better resolution or a better color depth is a good idea, but I would leave showing the details for when you actually zoom it in.

Accurately showing red as red and blue as blue is an entirely different story, not related to bit depth.

Re:

[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.

Re:To what end?

[JamesP]

To see billions of colors at the same time one only needs LSD technology...

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[lpq]

So the video makers won't have to use hacks to render a video? So -- as the original article said, the video designers can ensure that the color they assign to Shrek at the beginning of the film is the same color used throughout and isn't altered during the entire film by other objects needing green.

I can imagine that if you have a few objects that you'd like to reserve color palette for over a feature length movie, the number of colors available might be more of an issue than in one static picture. It's

It depends, but in this case about 720.

[Malekin]

Human brightness sensitivity is not even close to constant across the total range of brightness we can perceive. It varies widely over the range of colours we can see, and from person to person. Scene composition affects it, too: the shape of an object in relation to nearby objects changes our perception of its brightness. You have to consider lateral inhibition, limited integration capability, the optical modulation function of the eye, and orientation and temporal filtering, not to mention the various

Oblig

[AndGodSed]

Well, tech such as this will bring our holodeck dreams just that bit closer.

Also I can see where tech such as this can be implemented in the medical field, as a for-instance.

Higher gamut

[PhrostyMcByte]

I was hoping for something like ScRGB support. I've always wanted two things out of displays: higher DPI, and higher gamut. Does this deliver either?

Chris Chinnock, President of the research firm "Insight Media", is one of those who are skeptical about HP's claims. He says that while the 30-bit resolution will allow for better gradation between the color levels, the technology will not be able to increase the color gamut of a display.

Guess not. Oh well.

Yes, but...

[Bradmont]

how am I supposed to see how good this display is if they don't show me a picture of it?

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

[dpbsmith]

...in which people are shown the a series of images on two of these displays, side by side... with copies of each image in the series being presented on each display, one rendered with a full 30 bits and the other with rendering reduced to 24 bits... and with the 30-bit image being randomly assigned to the left or right.

I'd like to see whether people can actually identify the 30-bit image at a rate significantly greater than chance... or whether they're just doing it because they can.

Like the "Eight-transis

Oops; edited...

[dpbsmith]

(I meant to say... yes, I used Preview but I didn't look at it...) ...in which people are shown a series of images on a matched pair of these displays, placed side by side... with copies of each image in the series being presented on each display, one rendered with a full 30 bits and the other with rendering reduced to 24 bits... and with the 30-bit image being randomly assigned to the left or right.

I'd like to see whether people can actually identify the 30-bit image at a rate significantly greater than ch

Re:

[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.

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[evanbd]

If you dithered that gradient properly it would be much harder to tell. You've essentially created a signal with a period of 8 pixels and overlaid it on top of the smooth gradient as a result of the quantization errors. It's that signal that's easy to see. If you dithered it properly, the noise would be shaped so that it didn't show up at one specific frequency band (ie 8 pixels and its harmonics), it would be much less noticeable. Note that eg digital photography processes do this inherently to some de

RGB does not span the colorspace of the eye anyway

[viking80]

Normal RGB displays do not span the colorspace the eye can see. Just like good printer need more than 3 color ink to make good photograps, good display need more than Red, Green and Blue dots to span the whole colorspace of the eye. No matter how many bits you put behind each color, you can not improve this fact.

Brief explanation:
RGB colors are designed to match the human eyes sensitivity for the three primary colors. Each color cones spectral sensitivity partly overlaps the others. The RGB display therefo

Re:RGB does not span the colorspace of the eye any

[Mprx]

The receptor spectral overlap is one reason why the ultimate visual interface can only be direct neural connection. Anyone who's tried psychedelic drugs will have seen colors that don't exist in reality, generated directly in the brain bypassing the eyes. I also suspect the human brain will adapt well to at least five channels of color, given the existence of tetrachromat humans, and even higher dimension color space perceiving animals. Humans only see a tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, but

Quantum displays

[sveard]

Besides reqular light, I want my screen to radiate X-rays, Gamma-rays and infrared light, and also ordinary radio waves and even more kinds of waves.
I want it to emit quarks, neutrons and positrons, and perhaps god particles.
The constrast of todays screens is appalling, I want miniature black holes creating perfect black tones. I wouldn't know how to create perfect white tones though.

Yes, I am serious!

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

You can get a few of those if you just find a really old CRT. The ones that inspired your mother to warn you not to sit too close to the TV.

for extremely large values of 3

[Speare]

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.

Wow, the definition of dynamic range isn't based on the number of bits per pixel? Whodathunk? Then it must also be true that using a double variable instead of a float does not in fact make 3.0000000000000 > pi.

TuringTest for monitors...

[TropicalCoder]

I propose a Turing Test for monitors. Have a monitor, and a window opening onto some chosen view, side by side. Through the window one could view a street with cars and people passing by, while on the monitor is a real time video of exactly the same scene. To be fair, maybe the person judging would have his head secured in some kind of harness to prevent head movement. It would be interesting to see when a monitor would pass such a test, where the majority of viewers couldn't tell the difference. Any predic

dynamic range?

[rakslice]

"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."

Don't monitors use linear DACs? And doesn't this mean more or less linear light level scales? (I'll admit that I don't know much about how LCDs operate.)

Waste Of Money

[DynaSoar]

The human eye can discern around 4.5 million colors. Anything more than that requires instrumentation to detect. You can use it to prove you have a monitor capable of a billion colors, but you'll never see them.

Re:

[dreamchaser]

Nobody really knows exactly how many colors we can see. The estimates range from around 4 million to over 10 million, and it appears to vary widely between different people.

I do tend to agree that billions of colors is a waste though.

I've seen this before

[Trevin]

"High Dynamic Range display technology" was presented at SIGGRAPH 2004 by Sunnybrook Technologies [siggraph.org]. If I remember correctly, they used 16 bits of luminance as opposed to the usual 8 per color, and the display combined traditional LCD pixels with LED backing light, which is just what TFA states the HP monitors are now using. Not only did it give a very high contrast ratio (40000:1), but the images it displayed were absolutely stunning to see -- it's the difference between reflected light and transmitted lig

Re:

[eggnoglatte]

Well, Sunnybrook later renamed itself "Brightside Technologies", and was acquired by Dolby last year.

http://www.dolby.com/promo/hdr/ [dolby.com]

Could be that we are seeing the first commercial product spun out of Dolby's licensing efforts.

side bar topic:

[circletimessquare]

while a billion colors is obviously ridiculous, there are people who can see 100x more colors than an average person

scientists have recently identified a very small, very rare population of women who see in 4 colors, to a total of 100 million colors

most humans see in 3 colors, about 1 million colors: red, green, and blue. a tetrachromat has an extra cone type between red and green, around orange. it's only women because the mutation requires two x chromosomes to work

read all about it, they describe a women who can look into a river and make out silting and depth levels a normal human can't, x-men mutant indeed!:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06256/721190-114.stm [post-gazette.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[BiggerIsBetter]

You know, if I could have my kids genes tweaked, tetrachromacity is one of the mods I'd opt for.

Of course it has whiter whites...

[Wordplay]

It goes to 111111111111111111111111111111.

Oblig. bash quote

[phozz bare]

#495173 +(1653)- [X]
<microgal> and whiter than white
<RobinHood> heh
<Kronovohr> so...you're like #GGGGGG?

Apple innovation

[wdebruij]

Black is the new grey.

Lines are already forming at Apple stores worldwide
for the revolutionary black operating system
(which will ofcourse cost more than MacOS, the white edition).

Steve Jobs's wardrobe all make sense now. He had it
all planned from the start. He must be the one.

Another Con?

[Whiteox]

lol I can see it now....
2011: New apps and games only come in 30 bit. So now we need to upgrade from 24 bit to 30 bit.
The die-hard 24 bit-ters are holding out with their defunct copies of XP and DirectX9. Even Ubuntu's Zulu Zygote now has full 30 bit support.....

Hey! There was nothing wrong with VGA was there?
I mean Dukem Nukem v 1.0 was playable.....

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:

[ceoyoyo]

The way you test resolving ability is to get the optical device (eye or camera) to resolve something. The simplest test is to determine whether two dots are separate or not. Your optometrist does something similar every time she asks you to read the eye chart.

You can certainly determine the resolving power of a normal eye. No matter what the sensor is doing, the resolving power is fundamentally limited by the lens in front of it. You need two numbers though: separation (dots per inch) and distance to th

Re:

[icegreentea]

I think the grandparent was talking about color resolution not angular/optical (or is it something else?) resolution. There is no arguing that human eyes are fundamentally limited by our lenses, and that gives us a pretty much fixed benchmark for maximal human sight in one measure. But when it comes to distinguishing colors, human vision is far less concrete. The fact that we have an auto adjusting white balance should be enough proof of that.

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

The grandparent started off on colour then took a left turn into resolution. That seems to be a common occurrence in this discussion.

Colour IS much less concrete. If you put an 8 bit gradient up on the screen you can see the differences in colours side by side. Can you see that in an actual image? Very rarely.

Re:

[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:

[ceoyoyo]

Okay, true. You need two numbers if one of them is the number of dots in the image, which it almost always is when talking about tech.

Re:

[$random_var]

I wish I had a picture someone posted to once, it was something like blue text on a blue background with varying difference. Most that tried, myself included, couldn't detected anything less than 3 color codes apart (say #0000fc - #0000ff). That was on a perfectly still image right next to each other, you knew what you were looking for and I was staring very intensely to try to make out the outline.

That says more about the quality of the typical consumer-grade monitor than our ability to distinguish 24 (or 30) bits. Cheap monitors have compressed color gamuts and very much non-linear responses to the color codes it receives, so a difference of 3 can easily be compressed down into a difference too small to see. I did a little experiment just now: I have two LCD monitors with VGA inputs, one of which has to receive its signal through a DVI-VGA converter. Under the current settings I have, varying the

Re:

[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:

[Animaether]

Heck, if anything, those codecs should focus on higher quality output first; higher compression be damned. I hate seeing the blocky artifacts from any non-lossless video compression. I don't mind that they're only 8bpc, video and film noise tends to kill any banding issues anyway.. until they don't anymore, I won't worry about 10bpc, 16bpc or even 32bpc video encoding.

However... this is in collaboration with DreamWorks. This isn't about your typical DVD or Blu-Ray disc. This is about displaying things l

Re:

[moonbender]

Err. 24-bit displays aren't nearly as rare as you think. I'm sure they were, though, 10 years ago when that SGI display was still revolutionary...

Re:

[50000BTU_barbecue]

Again, I think you are wrong. There was a big stir just a few months ago about Apple displays being 18 bit. I think most LCD panels sold for PCs are still 18 bit panels, which is why you'll find it incredibly hard to get a simple, blunt "24 bits per pixel" mentioned on the box, or the company's website. But you'll get a gigantic "2ms response" sticker on the box. At best, you'll get something like "16 million colors" which means 18 bit, and 16.7 million colors when it's a true 24 bpp display.

Again, read t [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[imsabbel]

Every IPS and PVA Display should be 24bit.

I know that 18bit got a bit of a renaissance because of those high-speed "gamer" displays, but any quality LCD should be 24 bit. My 2 here certainly are.

Of couse if you buy the cheapest available, you dont deserve better. Thats the same price-group that also had a plethora of quality problems in the CRT age.

Re:

[taerogue]

Who cares about a response time of 6 or 4 ms on a panel that displays only 60 pictures per second, ie every 17 ms?

I've seen this (or a similar) argument regarding response times before, and it just doesn't make sense. I get the impression you are saying that, for a panel displaying 60 frames per second, any response time better than 17 ms is overkill? If a panel has a response time of 17ms (let's call it a hypothetical response time that is the same for any transition), that means that it will have *just* completed the crystal's rotation to the proper color/luminance as the next frame gets displayed! If you have an

Re:

[Yvan256]

Yeah, EGA power!

(I'm assuming you were talking palette, not simultaneous colors)

Re:

[somersault]

Can just change your threshold for comments to browse at 0 or above. Personally I browse at -1, but just stop reading when I recognise the sentence (that "let yOUR conscient be yOUR guide!" guy is annoying too :P )

Re:

[rs79]

" our eyes are more like 21 bit/pixel"

Thank you. Your eyes cannot distinguish more than 14 shades of any color and I really don't get why we need more than 24 bits per pixel. I'd have to see a screen in 30 bit that you can't replicate in 24 but to buy into this, but it sounds like nonsense to me.

Re:

[Wordplay]

Because current-tech LCDs don't display that full range.

Re:

[Wordplay]

Gah. I blew it in my prior response.

32 bit in graphics card terms is 8 bits per colored pixel plus an 8-bit alpha channel for transparency. Only 24 bits are used for colors, and our displays have been 24 bit displays.

This uses 30 bits for colors.

Re:Great! Until HP service swaps it for inferior p

[LinuxDon]

Was it by any chance a consumer laptop instead of a business laptop?

I've found the consumer warranty service to be extremely crappy. On the other hand, the warranty service on their business products is excellent as long as you have the proper maintenance contracts (if/when required).