Our meetings in the SMPTE Exhibition area focused on display technology. At 3M, we saw numerous demonstrations of quantum dot displays integrated into products. 3M manufactures the QDEF film that contains quantum dots from Nanosys. For example, 3M showed three Asus laptops side-by-side. One used a conventional white LED in the backlight and achieved 50% of the NTSC color gamut. A second one achieved 70% of the sRGB color gamut and the third used quantum dots to achieve 98% of the Adobe color gamut. (I pointed out to our reporter that 70% of sRGB and 50% of NTSC should be about the same, but he confirmed that this is what 3M said it was showing – Man. Ed.) Asus also plans to release a monitor in January that will achieve a similar 98% of the Adobe color volume.
LG has a monitor that achieves 94% of the Rec. 2020 color gamut. This uses conventional color filter technology coupled with blue LEDs emitting at 450nm. 3M and Nanosys have stated that achieving 97% of the 2020 color gamut is possible with a slight change in the color filter design.
A Hisense TV with the QDEF film was also on display achieving 80% of the 2020 gamut. This uses a slightly shorter red QD at 625nm instead of the conventional 640nm version.
Vizio’s new reference TVs achieve 85% of 2020 and include DolbyVision technology for High Dynamic Range.
TV Logic was showing its line of professional monitors, but there were no new products on display. These 4K monitors can support display of content in rec. 709 or the P3 color space and support 4K as 4xSDI inputs or a 12G SDI single cable input. We asked why they integrated the 12G SDI interface and the answer was that broadcasters need to start testing for the 2018 Olympics in Korea and the 4K over IP solutions are not mature enough yet, so they requested a 12G SDI interface.
In development is a new HDR monitor. This will be a quantum dot LCD monitor that is targeted to achieve about 95% of the 2020 color gamut. However, they are also evaluating using OLED despite it lower luminance capabilities. The HDR monitor, due next summer, will also include an HDMI 2.0a connector.
We stopped by Flanders Scientific as well. They are still evaluating the HDR options as well as the Hybrid Log Gamma option for their high-end professional monitors. Half of their monitors can do the P3 gamut natively today and they also offer a 2020 emulation mode. This means it will display colors that are beyond the native color gamut of the display by simply clipping the saturation beyond the native capabilities. That is fine for quality control, but not for mastering.
