Yesterday Dolby and Brightside Technology announced that Dolby will acquire Brightside in an all-cash deal worth about $28M. This transaction is expected to be complete by the end of Dolby’s 2007 fiscal year Q3.

Matt Brennesholtz
Insight Media Analyst

Brightside has developed the technology for High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging. Normal imaging uses 8 bits per color while HDR imaging can use up to 16 bits per color. Brightside is perhaps best known for their HDR display, the DR37-P 37" LCD display with a 2-D dimmable backlight. This system has 16-bit control over grayscale, 8 bits from the LCD panel and the additional 8 bits from local dimming of the backlight. I have seen this display at tradeshows and will vouch for the fact that it has amazing image quality, especially in scenes that contain a mixture of dark and bright areas. In one demonstration, the DR37-P was set side-by-side with a commercially available, high-end 37" LCD-TV whose manufacturer I decline to name. The Brightside monitor looked so good, especially in terms of contrast, I asked Helge Seetzen of Brightside if they had deliberately mis-adjusted the other set. He offered me the remote control and I couldn’t improve the image of the competitor, only make it still worse by comparison. He said he has gotten the same reaction at demonstrations at potential customers for the technology, even when they supplied and setup the comparison monitor themselves!

While the DR37-P is the only Brightside hardware product, they have significant IP for the entire HDR imaging chain, including acquisition, storage, broadcast formats and image processing.  Presumably acquiring this IP is the main goal for Dolby, not the display itself.  While there is only one published patent application assigned to Brightside, there are 3 issued patents and 4 published applications bearing Seetzen’s name.  Presumably all this IP, plus additional still-unpublished IP, is included in the package.
 

Dolby is best known for its high-quality sound technology.  This will give them a foothold in video and display technology of comparable quality.  As Insight Media analyst Ken Werner commented "I don’t know what Dolby knows about display technology, but they know a whole lot about licensing."