What changes will the TV industry face when HDR meets OLED?

The CES Consumer Electronics Show held at the beginning of each year is regarded by many as a barometer of the development of the technology industry in the coming year. The HDR technology that shined at this year's CES will undoubtedly be the hottest topic in the television industry for a long time to come.

At the CES 2016 exhibition that ended in January, major domestic and foreign TV companies focused their attention on HDR products, hoping that through this technology, existing LCD TVs would be able to compete with OLED TVs in terms of picture quality. The curtain has officially been raised on the new technology rewriting the TV industry.

Why can HDR challenge OLED?

Parameters such as brightness, color gamut, and contrast are key indicators for measuring the quality of a screen display.

Due to the limitations of the screen backlight, LCD TVs often find it difficult to perfectly display details in images with higher or lower brightness. In bright or dark scenes, they often produce overexposure or darkness, and are unable to accurately restore the details of the real environment that the human eye can distinguish.

The use of HDR in LCD TVs is precisely to target weak links such as picture contrast and color accuracy. By enhancing brightness and other means, it makes the bright parts clearer and the dark parts more profound, making the picture look layered and visually closer to the display effect of self-luminous OLED TVs.

Would adding HDR to OLED be a better solution?

The emergence of HDR technology is another opportunity for LCD TVs to catch up with OLED TVs in terms of display quality, but "close effects" can only be regarded as "close". Looking back, if OLED TVs, which are already in a leading position, are allowed to add HDR, will they become even better?

The answer is yes.

OLED means organic light-emitting diode. Unlike ordinary LCD, the self-luminous property of OLED means that the display screen does not require backlight support in structure, and has high contrast, uniform brightness, wide color gamut and wide viewing angle that far surpass LCD TVs.

If the role of HDR on LCD TVs is to optimize and make up for defects, then the effect on OLED TVs is to further improve and enhance the excellent picture quality. When ordinary LCD TVs and OLED TVs use HDR technology at the same time, the advantages of OLED TVs over LCD TVs in terms of display will not shrink but will expand.

Since the OLED screen itself has the characteristics of high brightness, high color gamut, and unlimited partitions, it is an extremely ideal display carrier for HDR images. The addition of HDR technology to OLED TVs can give rise to new heights of picture quality performance, especially for the two most difficult problems of brightness range and partition technology that are most difficult to overcome for HDR technology on LCD TV displays. These problems are no longer a problem in front of OLED TVs.

At CES 2016, where many new HDR TVs were on display, Skyworth, a Chinese company, has taken the lead in bringing OLED TVs equipped with HDR technology to the international stage. The S9, Skyworth's first OLED product to use HDR technology, was equipped with DolbyVision high-standard HDR technology advocated by Dolby, which ultimately enabled the product to achieve a brightness of up to 800nit, extreme black field performance, infinite contrast, full color gamut display, and 33.17 million extreme partitions. While providing the most perfect hardware support for HDR content display, it also demonstrated that HDR technology is used in OLED TVs, which is more powerful than LCD TVs.

When HDR meets OLED, domestic TV manufacturers usher in a technological breakthrough

While major TV brands are treating HDR technology as a "lifesaver" to extend the life of LCD TVs, Skyworth dares to use HDR as an "enhancer" for OLED TVs.

The reason is that, on the one hand, Skyworth is a staunch supporter of OLED TVs among domestic TV manufacturers. It not only has mature OLED product mass production capabilities, but is also the first to achieve mass production of 4K OLED displays worldwide, which provides a solid foundation for the concept of "HDR+OLED".

On the other hand, HDR technology is based on OLED and integrates two better display technologies. It is also imperative in the pursuit of picture quality for TV products. Better picture quality is the core product demand of TV, and it is also the original intention of Skyworth to insist on developing OLED.

The addition of HDR technology has made the originally excellent OLED TV even better. The quality of the screen display effect is the most intuitive and decisive factor in measuring the quality of a TV product. The emergence of HDR combined with OLED is undoubtedly the best solution for TV display quality at this stage.

Of course, it is also worth noting that the realization of the breakthrough idea of ​​"HDR+OLED" did not appear in the products of international brands, but allowed the domestic TV manufacturer Skyworth to take the lead. The future HDR era may also provide domestic TV brands with a powerful opportunity to challenge new heights in screen display technology.

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.