Displays: Something Old, Something New

Joint Session - SID-MAC with SMPTE-NY - 2 Great Talks!

Improved Color for Displays and Content

Matthew Brennesholtz

The current state-of-the-art for wide color gamut (WCG) displays and content is ITU-R Recommendation BT.2020-2. In order to achieve this gamut, it is necessary for display manufacturers to use either laser light sources or similar narrow band emitters such as quantum dots (QDs) or perovskites. Since all current consumer displays have a smaller color gamut than Rec. 2020, if content is color graded to Rec. 2020, it will not be viewed as intended by the content creator. While Rec. 2020 is the largest possible three-primary color gamut, multiple primary color (MPC) displays can have a much larger gamut without the use of lasers. Currently, there are many MPC displays available in the consumer and professional spaces. Unfortunately there are no standards for MPC content or displays so content creators cannot take advantage of the WCG that MPC displays can provide. In this talk I will discuss the problems of three-primary WCG display systems and propose a four-primary color gamut that would both be manufacturable and provide a much larger color gamut than Rec. 2020.

Matthew Brennesholtz has 38 years experience in the display industry, starting with the design and manufacturing of CRTs at GTE/Sylvania in 1978. Since then he has worked for GE on the Talaria projector, Philips Research on a variety of display technologies and Philips LMS on LCoS microdisplay projection. After leaving Philips in 2004 he went to Insight Media, a publishing and consulting firm for display technology. Currently he is an independent consultant to the display industry and writes a bi-weekly article for Display Daily. He is a Life Member of SMPTE and a Senior Member of the SID.

Blame Canada, or How Research from the Mid 1960s is Screwing Up Our Pictures Today

William C. Miller

Synopsis: In the 1960s, the CBC conducted research on the control room environment to determine the optimum settings for monochrome CRT monitors and the optimum environment in which they should be used. They concluded that for best results, the area around the display, called the surround, should be illuminated to a level of 10% of peak white. This was reported in the SMPTE Journal in 1965. The recommendation was adopted by both SMPTE and ITU-R and has been carried forward to this day.

In this presentation, I will explain how this number was arrived at, why it's often ignored and why it's actively harmful to image quality in the current day. I will also explain why a related recommendation is likely responsible for the poor performance of video compression systems at low luminance levels. Finally, I will describe what's being done to fix this.

William C. Miller is President of Miltag Media Technology, LLC, where he consults on technology and standards for media. He has been a broadcaster for more than 40 years, 33 of them at ABC, and has been actively involved in the development of technical standards for television for more than 25 years.

Mr. Miller is a SMPTE Fellow and serves as the Society’s Membership Vice President. He is also an elected member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society’s Administrative Committee. He is Chairman of SMPTE 10E-fpm, the Drafting Group on Reference Displays and Reference Viewing Environment, in which capacity he has had to learn far more than he ever expected about image display.

WHEN: Tuesday, February 2, 2016, 5:30 - 8:00 PM

WHERE: Davis Auditorium, Columbia University (Directions Here)