Can the emergence of Sony's HDR high-tech keep LCD as the mainstream?

Often, people tend to compare the pros and cons of technologies based on the order in which they appear, and embrace emerging technologies in order to follow the trend. In the TV market over the past two years, the development of OLED has shown a trend of replacing LCD as the "future".

Compared with LCD, is OLED really better in display performance? Is there really no room for LCD to be killed on the beach? According to the general plot, at the critical moment of life and death, there will always be some warriors with dazzling weapons to domineeringly appear and tell the people who are ignorant of the truth but happily follow the crowd in an unquestionable tone: It's not like that, dear.

This time, it was Sony and its "black technology" that appeared - Backlight Master Drive, which is the master version of the dynamic backlight system.

Let’s start with the concept: LCD and OLED, SDR and HDR

LCD, which is what we often call liquid crystal display, uses liquid crystal to control light transmittance technology to achieve color display.

OLED, or organic light-emitting diode, is also known as organic electro-laser display technology. It uses a very thin coating of organic materials and a glass substrate, and can display self-luminescence when powered on. This is also the most fundamental difference between LCD and OLED - OLED is self-luminous, while LCD needs to be illuminated by a backlight panel to display.

So, what is the difference between self-luminous and non-self-luminous? To make an inappropriate analogy, you can think of it as the difference between the sun and the moon. The moon can only reflect sunlight, and its brightness is very limited. Compared with LCD, this feature of OLED brings it higher luminous efficiency and better contrast.

At this point, we have to mention another concept - brightness dynamic range. It can be simply understood as the maximum brightness range that the display device can provide, which is an extremely important parameter for measuring video quality. With this concept, we can summarize all the above explanations as follows: In principle, the brightness dynamic range of OLED technology is higher than that of LCD.

Even if you are not familiar with the parameter of brightness dynamic range, you must have heard of its measurement standards - SDR, which has lasted for 50 years, and HDR, which has been popular recently. In order to meet the needs of the human visual system for ambient light perception, Sony proposed its own HDR format, which can reach 10 to the fifth power nits, which is also the typical brightness dynamic range that human vision can accept.

It should be emphasized that, when it comes to a certain technology, HDR can not only bring a larger dynamic range of brightness, but also express richer colors. In other words, HDR establishes a larger coordinate system than SDR to reproduce a larger color gamut and a higher dynamic range of brightness.

Backlight Master Drive: Let large-size LCD TVs achieve effects close to RGB OLED

In theory, OLED technology can indeed present natural colors to the greatest extent possible. Shouldn't it be natural for such a good technology to become a market trend? The actual situation is not so simple.

According to Zhou Zhenyu, manager of Sony China's home display product department, most OLED TVs on the market use white light OLED, which is completely different from RGB OLED technology in principle. White light OLED cannot display the complete color space that OLED can achieve in theory. Most OLED TVs on the market use white light OLED technology because RGB OLED technology is very expensive and cannot be made into a large scale. According to him, the cost of a master reference and monitor using RGB OLED technology on site is close to 300,000 yuan.

Whether in terms of brightness range, white balance, color control or color gamut control, RGB OLED is a benchmark for TVs. Ordinary LCD TVs are far behind. Even with the use of local light control technology, LCD TVs can achieve good brightness level control in dark scenes, thereby maintaining the original color of the picture and excellent white balance. Unfortunately, the brightness still cannot reach the ideal range.

In order to make LCD TVs achieve an effect close to that of RGB OLED, it is necessary to improve the backlight system technology. This is also the original intention of the birth of Sony's HDR black technology - Backlight Master Drive.

It is reported that this system adopts a new optical design, which can effectively control the overflow problem of adjacent LED lights. At the same time, it uses ultra-high brightness LED backlights and high-density direct-down LED backlight sources, and is equipped with advanced driving algorithms to optimize energy consumption.

In the comparison of the demo playback, it was found that the color and brightness of the Sony Backlight Master Drive prototype were very close to the master reference RGB OLED monitor. In comparison, the other white light LED TV was much inferior in color reproduction and picture performance, especially in the performance of high-brightness pictures.

Since only the technical prototype was displayed this time, it is impossible to let everyone directly feel the difference in the picture through the photos. The relevant person in charge revealed that Sony is actively evaluating and assessing it, and strives to deploy this technology into products as soon as possible.

"Many people would say that OLED is the future direction of technology development, but it is not, because size is the fatal flaw of RGB OLED." Zhou Zhenyu believes, "Through Backlight Master Drive technology, we can get contrast and color display effects close to OLED on large-size LCD TVs, so LCD will still be the mainstream trend in the next few years."

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.