Nanoco Display Update: Brilliant Things to Come
It’s been an “event full” fall for display at Nanoco as our team headed to a variety of conferences featuring the latest in display technology.
At both the Social of Motion Picture and Television Engineers’ (SMPTE) annual technical conference and the Society for Imaging Science and Technology’s 24th Annual Color and Imaging Conference (CIC), our ears were burning as conversations trended towards wide color gamut and working to improve methods to transition from smaller to larger gamuts while preserving the original quality and intent.
We were excited to see so many other industry innovators working towards bigger, better, more brilliant display goals. Here are our takeaways toward the future of display:
SMPTE
At the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers’ (SMPTE) event, the traditions and rich history of Hollywood intersected with the technical capabilities for high dynamic range, wide color gamut, and higher resolution, helping to drive significant conversations. That was particularly evident in the keynote: “Past, Present, and Future of Broadcast and Cinema,” presented by outgoing SMPTE President and VP of Engineering at CBS, Robert Seidel, and director and visual effects pioneer, Douglas Trumbull.
While time-tested practices like the use of 35MM film, projecting at 24 frames per second, and a DCI-P3 color gamut appear to be here to stay, innovations in display technology are pushing filmmakers to ensure displays truly capture the artistic intent of their films.
As you can imagine, careful thought goes into every detail of the moviemaking process, whether that be a shade of clothing or wall color on the set to the exact hue of the sunset in the backdrop of a closing scene. So much of the focus at SMPTE was on how technology can more accurately represent the artistic intent of filmmakers.
Establishing and maintaining standards so that a movie viewed in one theatre looks identical to every other theatre is an industry priority. That’s a much easier task in cinema, where there are few options in projection equipment and tight controls over the release of content. Once those movies hit the home cinema and the television screen, it’s a different story.
Great effort is being made around how to best manage this extra information to maintain consistency throughout the production process, and ensure delivery of reliable content. Beyond the need for better algorithms for color mapping is also the need for improved metrics and assessment of color accuracy. This is where the tunability of quantum dots shines, with a broader range in color gamut, enabling more brilliant, true to vision color. What will ultimately accelerate the implementation of new standards addressing these advanced technologies will be wider spread adoption of the display technology that uses it.
CIC
Color gamuts were an equally hot topic at the Society for Imaging Science and Technology’s 24th Annual Color and Imaging Conference (CIC) last month, with a particular focus on the challenges of wide color gamut (WCG) displays.
Similar to the technical developments for the motion picture and television industry, researchers are working towards improving methods to transition from smaller to larger gamuts while preserving the original quality and intent.
This is just one gap we are working to narrow. But WCG comes with another hurdle of the human variety. Theoretically, if everyone had a WCG display in hand, then content could be captured, broadcasted, and displayed all while preserving the original color scheme. But here’s where human error comes in: there is variability person-to-person in color sensing. It’s called observer metamerism, and WCG displays intensify this, leading to a greater occurrence of color mismatch between different displays. Research and development continue in the display industry to overcome these WCG challenges.
The passion and innovative spirit of these events have us even more motivated and excited to be a part of continued display innovation being driven by quantum dot technology. We look forward to implementing Nanoco’s heavy metal-free CFQD® quantum dots as part of the next generation of the display.
