Display Myths Shattered: How Monitor & HDTV Companies Cook Their Specs
Posted 05/18/10 at 06:03:33 PM by Dr. Raymond Soneira
Take everything you think you know about displays and throw it out the window. It's time for a clinic on what display specs really mean—brace yourself for the alarming truth
Vision is our most amazing and complex sense, so it’s no surprise that display technology is so amazing and complicated. It’s also no surprise that most consumers don’t have a good understanding of how displays function, or the best way to select them, buy them, use them, and adjust them.
Not only are displays getting more complicated and harder to understand, but the competition between manufacturers has gotten so brutal that marketing gimmicks—ploys that exploit the average consumer’s technical ignorance—are playing an increasing role in driving sales. The goal of this article is to point out and explain some of the most important myths, misconceptions, and misunderstandings about display technology. Much of what you’re going to read is like the classic tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes. What you’ve been told about the latest and greatest thing really isn’t there, or better, or meaningful, or even visible.
In the following pages, I’m going to discuss user controls, contrast ratios, pixel response time, and color gamut. These topics comprise just a portion of what a savvy consumer needs to know, so we’ll be addressing other confusing display topics in future issues of the magazine and on MaximumPC.com (Editors Note: Also check out 23 Tips for Buying the Best HDTV). But for now, let’s just start our journey with what should be the best question to ask before buying a new display: “What are the most important manufacturer specs to compare?” Unfortunately, the answer is none, because they’re all exaggerated marketing specs rather than objective scientific specs. The only specs that are useful and meaningful are those in reviews that evaluate every display with the same consistent methodology—like the reviews in Maximum PC.
Confusing Users with User Controls
One reason why most consumers don’t understand their monitors and TVs is because some of the most important user controls have misleading and technically incorrect names. No wonder folks can’t figure out how to adjust them. In fact, they misadjust them, and then usually just leave them misadjusted permanently. Here are some highlights—well, lowlights really—of inane user-control engineering.
When Brightness Isn't
On mobile displays with only a single user control, the control labeled “brightness” does in fact actually control the brightness of the image on the screen by increasing or decreasing the backlight intensity. However, on most monitors and TVs, the control labeled “brightness” does not control the brightness. It actually controls the signal-level setting for black on the display, which indirectly has a minor effect on brightness.
Contrast? Not So Much
The control labeled “contrast” has absolutely no effect on image contrast. It actually controls the brightness of the image, by increasing or decreasing the amplitude of the video signal. Monitors and TVs really should have a true contrast control, but the closest you’ll find on some HDTVs is an obscure control labeled “gamma,” and I have yet to see one that works properly. For more information on gamma, see my article on color and gray-scale accuracy here:
www.displaymate.com/ShootOut_Part_2.htm.
Controls of a Bygone Era
Even more shocking, today’s digital monitors and HDTVs still have the same basic user controls that were found in the original analog NTSC color TVs from 1953: brightness, contrast, tint, and sharpness. These controls only made sense for analog signals on the old NTSC television system. Brightness controlled the CRT direct-current bias, contrast controlled the video amplifier gain, tint controlled the phase of the color subcarrier, and sharpness performed analog high-frequency peaking to compensate for the limited video bandwidth of the old vacuum tube amplifiers. Today, none of these controls are necessary for digital signals.
Rotary controls for a mid-century analog CRT. Those Contrast and Brightness controls are legit.
Brightness and contrast controls shouldn’t be there because, for digital video, the black level is fixed at level 16, reference white at 235, and peak white at 255. Similarly, tint and phase have no real meaning for digital signals. Finally, the sharpness control isn’t appropriate for digital displays because in a digital image there’s no transmission degradation—the image is received exactly as it appeared at the source. Sharpening the image involves digitally processing the pixels, which leads to artifacts and noise unless it’s done at resolutions much higher than the final displayed resolution, which, of course, isn’t the case inside your monitor or HDTV.
Controls that Do Worse Than Nothing
Most monitor and HDTV user-menu options are actually unnecessary features added for marketing purposes—gimmicks to suggest the display has unique features that other models lack. Even worse, most of these options actually decrease image and picture quality.
In many cases, it’s not even clear what these sham controls really do. The documentation seldom explains them, and I even know engineers from high-level manufacturers who don’t know what the controls do, either. When I test TVs, I spend an inordinate amount of time using test patterns to figure out what the options and selections really do, and in most cases, turning off the fancy options leads to the best picture quality and accuracy.
Digital on-screen controls for a Samsung Syncmaster 242MP—that really have no business being labeled Contrast and Brightness.
The following is a list of useless (or near-useless) menu options and selections from three HDTVs sold by major brands: Black Corrector, Advanced CE, Clear White, Color Space, Live Color, DRC Mode, DRC Palette, Dynamic Contrast, xvYCC, Color Matrix, RGB Dynamic Range, Black Level, Gamma, White Balance, HDMI Black Level, Fresh Contrast, Fresh Color, Flesh Tone, Eye Care, Digital NR, DNIe, Detail Enhancer, Edge Enhancer, Real Cinema, Cine Motion, Film Mode, Blue Only Mode.
Some of the terms sound impressive, but almost all of this is unnecessary puffery and jargon that confuses not only consumers but the pros, as well.
Next page: Contrast Ratio, Ad Absurdum >>
Seeing comments by Raymond
Submitted by BlazePC on Fri, 08/27/2010 - 2:14pm
Seeing comments by Raymond and even a few others simply ruined the experience of taking in and digesting this otherwise well written expose. I suppose it's the wake of the internet, for lack of a better description. Translated: Educated and experienced engineer transforms to talking head pontificator, turns into defensive butt-hurt blogger (in the comments section following said "otherwise well written expose"). Hopefully my observation is taken in the spirit that it is presented. It would have come of better if the author just stuck to answering questions & suggested futher reading instead of getting emotional in the comments section.
Coming to the end of both the article and the comment section it seems pretty evident to me that there is a case to made for "digital transport accuracy" and then another, completely diffferent case covering the greater topic of the subjective nature of human eyesight and perception. Mis-labled functions aside, many of, if not pratically all of, the listed features/settings you've deemed unnecessary do in fact have a perceivable influence on the picture output and therefore real pratical value. I would counter that your piece is more valuable as an objective viewpoint on the need for standardization coming from a "purists" point of view rather than a presentation of workable solutions for the end user - since it totally omits any relevant content or value with regard to what it boils down to at the end of the day - the vast variance of conditions that contribute to how humans perceive light (similarly to the way they perceive sound) and how these controversial TV settings help the end user adjust to their viewing preferences, beyond the plane of measurement. Put an entirely different way, the buck (measured to spec picture element or attribute) stops at the plane of measurement. Picture accuracy defined by the content creator and verified at the plane of measurement doesn't usually translate to 1:1 perceived accuracy for all receivers (viewers). Purity and accuracy from a repeatable point of reference - I get that - but measuring how the human eye converts that information is an entirely different and complicated ball of wax, so things get really messy and subjective.
From a purist standpoint, and being an engineer myself, I understand the underlying theme of this article and it's relative value in that context. From a pratical standpoint though, I think it fails to offer that much needed guidance that most consumers really need. It smacks of an all or nothing approach and comes off sort of snooty at times. Sorry, not meant to be offensive, that's just my perception of it all, especially after reading the tone of comments added by Raymond.
Some food for thought: Assuming tightly controlled calibration equipment and the right source material, measuring color accuracy at the surface plane of a display device (which is an absolute must in establishing & maintaining standards) totally ignores the reality of the subsequent transmission of said light information to the retina (and ultimately the brain) and ALL the post picture plane interactions (alterations) that can and do occur. Simply put, purist style analysis is only part of the game - and not necessarily half of it. Internal settings are quite useful in the end user environment because - as designed - they are adjustments. And adjustments are required to play nice, so to speak, in varied environmental settings and with varying levels of perception. The mfg's know this and that's why there are all these "sliders and buttons" to play with; people inherently want to dial in their personal preferences, some more than others - and especially with TVs.
In a nutshell, display devices should be built to ever exacting specifications but user controllability IS required to offset environmental factors that ultimately influence the viewing experience - and there's quite a long list of those, like it or not.
Submitted by johnfull on Thu, 08/26/2010 - 3:59pm
I enjoyed the generalizations in the article and agree that there is lots of hype out there.
I'm one who is sensitive to the blue/green or cyan colors in nature and especially in cinema.
For years, movies exaggerated aquamarine colors because they could not be reproduced on TV.
The green of conventional phosphor CRTs is too yellow to mix with blue to produce saturated blue-greens.
LCDs can pick a value of green closer to the mixing point for both yellow and cyan, but the addition of
a yellow pixel allows more of a shift towards emerald green for the green pixel without sacrificing yellow.
I have yet to see the Sharp Quattron and I have a Toshiba with expanded gamut that renders yellows and
cyans both quite well. There is some artifacting in the shadows, though, from too much blue in the green.
If the Quattron is set up properly, it could move the green point significantly to deeper and bluer green
without sacrificing yellow. And shadows could be rendered with yellow instead of green, which tends to
be perceived preferentially in some darker scenes. Like I say, I'll have to see it to believe it.
Making the triangle of gamut into a quadrilateral is not voodoo, though. How it is handled is the question...
Submitted by johnfull on Fri, 08/27/2010 - 7:33pm
Flesh tones are rendered much better with a yellow than with a
green. This was discovered in the early days of NTSC, where
faces would take on a green pallor with the wrong lighting or
the wrong makeup or with the vagaries of signal phase drift.
When the original phosphors were updated, a yellower green
was used to give more brightness and to improve flesh tones.
Good bye to the aqua tones of the 50s, though.
LCD has restored some of the green, but the widest variance
from the ideal is in the green still. With a yellow pigment, the
nose of the gamut triangle can be opened out onto the greens
without giving up the yellows. More brightness, more accuracy
in fleshtones, more lattitude in mixing aqua/teals, richer green.
The human vision has overlaps of all three cone receptors in
the cyan region. It's an important component of the natural
world and should be respected. Powder blue is a poor substitute,
but had come to stand in for decades. I welcome the 4th color
to the grid. It actually allows a compact pixel as opposed to the
wide 3-band pixel. I'll have to see what Sharp has done with
the technology and report back...
Submitted by NinjaFresh on Sun, 06/27/2010 - 2:28am
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mso-bidi-language:#0400;}This is a great article vey informative. I work for a pretty big electronics store, my job is to sell television sets, if I was to go around spewing this information I'm more then likely to get a stern talking to because they enjoy pushing larger ticketed items. I learned a lot of great stuff about the color gamut. That will make talking about professional calibration much easier. I had a question about some things though as I haven't worked in this industry for long.
1) I know that you talk about how the actual Hz isn't what the manufactures' say and you go to talk about how you should stay away from 240 Hz. My question is I can a difference between the 240 Hz and the 120 Hz sets. Now is that because they run better processors and such, or is that because it is a placebo effect? I have others who swear they can tell a difference too.
2) I get a lot of flak from people when it comes to HDMI cords. Now I understand that when you buy a cord from a store it is usually grossly inflated due to the low mark up on most Tvs. How much of a difference is there between lets say a Monster 1000 Series cable and a cheap dollar one off the internet. I would assume that each cable would have a place depending on the application.
Also I joined this site just to comment on this article. I will have to do my best to tell the consumer more about this in order to educate them better. If the word gets out to the consumer then the industry will have to change, or resk the backlash of an angry buyer. Thank you Dr. Soneira. I look forward to more of your articles.
Submitted by NinjaFresh on Sun, 06/27/2010 - 2:18am
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mso-bidi-language:#0400;}This is a great article very
very informative. I work for a pretty big electronics store, my job is to sell
television sets, if I was to go around spewing this information I'm more then
likely get a stern talking to because they enjoy pushing larger ticketed items.
I learned a lot of great stuff about the color gamut. That will make talking
about professional calibration much easier. I had a question about some things
though as I haven't worked in this industry for long.1) I know that you talk about how the actual Hz isn't what the manufactures’
say and you go on to talk about how you should stay away from 240 Hz. My
question is I can tell a difference between the 240 Hz and the 120 Hz sets. Now
is that because they run better processors and such, or is that because it
is a placebo effect? I have others who swear they can tell a difference too.2) I get a lot of flak from people when it comes to HDMI cords. Now I
understand that when you buy a cord from a store it is usually grossly inflated
due to the low mark up on most TVs. How much of a difference is there between
lets say a Monster 1000 series cable and a cheap dollar one off the internet. I
would assume that each cable would have a place depending on the application.Also I joined this site just to comment on this article. I will have to do my
best to tell the consumer more about this in order to educate them better. If
the word gets out to the consumer then the industry will have to change, or risk
a backlash. Thank you Dr. Soneira. I look forward to more of your articles.
Submitted by NinjaFresh on Sun, 06/27/2010 - 2:31am
I just wanted to edit this and it just reposted what I just posted. Oh well, humm I don't know why I'm getting the what looks to be source code on my post. Wounder if it has something to do with me using Firefox.
Submitted by Seedu on Thu, 06/24/2010 - 9:33pm
i wish there was a way this entire article could be spammed throughout the entire technogeek world so one spreads to another then to another and then the whole world will be able to read up and learn and stop "DROOLING OVER 1,000,000,000:1 contrast ratios" & "2ms Response time" ... :(
Submitted by fred64 on Mon, 06/21/2010 - 7:57am
Mr. Fred
- To calibrate without expense, use any THX movie DVD. Its low tech, but does better than nothing. Look for the THX logo (usually on options menu). The THX logo can be selected and it will go into calibration mode for audio, bightness, contrast, color and more.
- Room light makes a huge difference in picture quality, especially on DLP and LCD TVs. Different settings are needed for Sunlight than late night. My TV has 3 picture modes for each input that can save unique adjustment sets. I used the THX logo to set each for bright sunlight, medium daylight or late night. Makes a big difference.
- Certain features are needed to improve quality on non 1080P video sources. Without help, 320 video is horrid, 480 is awful and 720 is just OK on a digital big screen TV. This article makes it sound like any enhancers are worthless. Video enhancement of low res sources was one of my big differentiators, when choosing my rig. I always asked them to show me low res SDTV channels and even took my 8mm video cam to the stores to see how it looked.
Submitted by Monstro on Fri, 06/18/2010 - 2:34pm
I wouldn't really call the xvYCC color space gimmicky or such, nor is using the CIE 1931 color space inferior. Most other color spaces that use tristimulus values are derived from this space, and it is no less valid than any other...just because you looked at CIE 1976 doesn't make your analysis any more special...I can derive the same values using CIE 1931.
I would think the future of display technology will be eventually wrapped in xvYCC...a color space that can display ALL colors viewable by the human eye. For now, it is somewhat gimmicky, only because every link in the chain (display production, transmission, display) must be xvYCC compliant in order to benefit from it.
As far as Deep Color goes...the science says the human eye can detect about 10 million colors....so anything over that may be overkill...but if you can detect banding, then why not smooth it out even more?
Submitted by RaymondSoneira on Fri, 06/18/2010 - 6:45pm
The 1976 Uniform CIE color coordinate space was established to correct the large flaws in the 1931 version. It's a major improvement - that's why it was invented!!! Yes, it's very easy to transform from one version to the other. The fact that the newer 1976 color space is UNIFORM is what makes it clearly superior for evaluating color gamuts and color errors. The older 1931 version is so non-uniform that it is useless for evaluating these issues. I am amazed that people are still using it and even more amazed that anyone would be defending or recommending it for this purpose.
If you get an xvYCC display now you are a super early adopter. It's going to take a long time (years) before much mainstream consumer content will be produced with an extended color gamut... and there is a very good chance that the eventual production standard will be different from the current implementation - so it's unlikely to be useful during the lifetime of current HDTVs. This is typical for early adopters, just be aware that you are paying for something that is unlikely to ever work properly...
I'm glad you mentioned Deep Color because it's another misunderstood display technology issue. The banding and false contouring that you generally see in ALL non-CRT displays is produced by irregularities within the displays NOT in the 24-bit images that are transmitted to them. If you display the same images on a high quality CRT you won't see any banding or false contouring. I have produced a number of side-by-side display Shoot-Outs that have demonstrated that. The CRT is entirely analog and free of digital artifacts that produce the banding and false contouring in other display technologies. Deep Color won't correct these artifacts and flaws. The "Digital Granularity" section of my "Display Artifacts and Image Quality" article discusses this issue in quantitative detail. http://www.displaymate.com/ShootOut_Part_3.htm
Submitted by Richard Salmon on Mon, 07/12/2010 - 9:24am
You certainly are right on use of u'v' rather than xy - it amazes me that so much of the displays (or at any rate the marketing) community use the hugely non-linear xy system. They also use it when calculating the percentages of colour gamut, which is so clearly bananas as to be laughable. u'v' is not toally uniform, but it is about an order of magnitude more linear than xy (and I mean that - some numerically 'identical' colour differences in xy are about 10 times more visible than others).
There is another really serious problem with xvYCC, which is that it is not connected to a standardised colour gamut, therefore there is no way for the producer of the image to know what it will look like on the consumer's display. In other words, it is impossible to colour-control your xvYCC output. That is why no professional user will ever use it, unless it is linked in some way to some new set of primaries (akin to Adobe RGB or the digital cinema P3 primaries). Then you have to be sure that the consumer has those primaries on their display. Thus we will need three versions of each Blu-Ray DVD - one mastered for Rec709/sRGB monitors, one for P3 and one for AdobeRGB. And there won't be much material on which you'll be able to see any difference.
Your mention of false contouring seen on non-CRT displays is also borne out by our experience. If you put 8-bit uncompressed source material side-by-side on both a CRT and a flat panel, you will be really hard pressed to see any countouring on the CRT, but it's common on all but the very best professional flat panels.
Submitted by RTB on Mon, 06/14/2010 - 6:26am
Thank you Dr. Soneira for cutting through the claptrap.
This article should be nominated for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism.
Submitted by NinjaFresh on Sun, 06/27/2010 - 2:55am
Why would you kill such a great robot?
Submitted by PeoplePowered on Sun, 06/13/2010 - 8:34am
"The following is a list of useless (or near-useless) menu options and
selections from three HDTVs sold by major brands: Black Corrector,
Advanced CE, Clear White, Color Space, Live Color, DRC Mode, DRC
Palette, Dynamic Contrast, xvYCC, Color Matrix, RGB Dynamic Range,
Black Level, Gamma, White Balance, HDMI Black Level, Fresh Contrast,
Fresh Color, Flesh Tone, Eye Care, Digital NR, DNIe, Detail Enhancer,
Edge Enhancer, Real Cinema, Cine Motion, Film Mode, Blue Only Mode."
Sorry buddy, but some of those features are useful. Some may not be useful to all, or to all sources - but they can relate just like the motion enhancers to the reference of the consumers.
One that catches my eye is Sony's very own DRC Mode/Palette. Do you even know what it is? It's Sony's HD processor settings which in term, definitely increases picture quality. DRC-MF is otherwise known as Digital Reality Creation - Multi Function. It's not useless - it's probably one of the most important features.
Some of those features provide things as they are advertised. Like Black Corrector, Advanced CE, Cinemotion, Digital NR, Dynamic Contrast, etc. They may not provide ACCURATE results, BUT they still do WHAT they are ADVERTISED as. What is your definition of useless?
/end rant
Thank you.
Submitted by RaymondSoneira on Sun, 06/13/2010 - 9:21am
If what you want is accurate picture quality where the HDTV is showing the same picture seen at the production studio then all of these features are useless. That is the point of view that I have clearly stated throughout the article. Professional studio monitors don't have any of these frivolous controls - they don't increase picture quality or accuracy. Now, if what you want is to tinker with the picture for your own amusement, by all means get all of these controls - but once again they are completely unnecessary and wind up decreasing picture quality and accuracy. It's absolutely ridiculous to think that the consumer is needed to perform all of these technical adjustments - they don't have the expertise or instrumentation - and they shouldn't have to because that is the job of the manufacturer. Those controls are there purely as marketing gimmicks. If you read serious HDTV reviews you'll see that they pretty much always turn off all of these features, and if you have your HDTV professionally calibrated they will turn them off for you.
Submitted by PeoplePowered on Sun, 06/13/2010 - 11:06am
It's not so much of a marketing gimmick (as apposed to Motion Enhancers and 120hz - which you haven't bothered to mention as a gimmick!!)
You must also realize that most consumers do not have access to professional devices nor calibration. Or it costs to much for them. That and most televisions don't always view sources with equal calibration. It's televisions we have, not professional monitors for intensive accurate usage. People may wish to use these settings to get oversaturated colors for god who knows why. Not many of the average consumers care for 100% accuracy.
SD content, 480p, 720p, 1080i... interlaced and progressive singals and their own respective sources WILL require their own calibration.
SD source is probably way to common. That's why we have all these so called "useless" features to increase psuedo quality
Like I said, that's when DRC comes in handy for low resolution sources - because accuracy is nothing to worry about it in SD.
All you care for is HD. Yes, good for you because I do as well. Though, HDTV can and will be used for other sources that use lower resolution, and that's when some of these 'useless' features become useful.
Television is not always about 100% accurate calibration. For HD of course I get the point.
Submitted by Spencer Taylor on Sat, 06/12/2010 - 11:54pm
I made my wife read this, and it was the 1st time she "got" what I was talking to her about, e.g. image quality, deep blacks, etc. For the 1st time, she didn't think I was totally crazy. I recommenf to all the fella's - make your women read this!
Submitted by RaymondSoneira on Sun, 06/13/2010 - 7:51am
Is your wife willing to post a comment encouraging other women to learn more about buying HDTVs and then helping with the entire HDTV and room setup so it delivers the best picture quality?
Most of the time you hear that women only get involved with HDTVs from a decorating perspective for the living room or bedroom. Here is a great reason why women need to become more involved:
Women are often more sensitive to color accuracy than men (sorry but I need to invoke stereotypes here). HDTVs are now transitioning to become the best way to view the family digital photos. Since you've taken the photos you know exactly how everyone and everything should look. If the color accuracy of the TV is even slightly off then family member's complexions, clothing and other objects will appear wrong. You don't know what the people and objects in a Hollywood or TV set really look like, so there is a wide tolerance for inaccurate color, but there is very little wiggle room in the family photos - because people will get upset if they look wrong on their (or GrandMa's) HDTV. (Note to manufacturers: this is why you need to start making HDTVs with accurate color calibration.)
How to buy the right HDTV is only the first step (and I'm working with the Editors of Maximum PC on some articles on this topic). Step two is also critical and also needs major help from the woman of the house. The entire viewing environment for the HDTV is very important for picture quality, color accuracy and viewing comfort. In particular, finding the best position and height placement for the screen, the viewing distance, the viewing positions in the room, and also controlling the room's ambient lighting are all critical. If you don't do this right then you're throwing away a lot of your HDTVs performance.
Submitted by grush on Fri, 06/11/2010 - 4:31pm
Thanks for the great article Dr. Soneira. It really opened my eyes to how the manufacturers specs are meaningless.
I have a few questions and if you could answer them I'd really appreciate it.
1. You mentioned how the Sharp Quattron technology was really a marketing ploy. What about the Mitsubishi DLP TV's 6-color technology that adds 3 other colors to RGB? I assume this is a useless scheme also. Am I going to be able to get proper color out of these sets?
2. If all these controls and adjustments are useless or possibly a degradation to picture quality. Why are the manufacturers so hot to include them? Are they just trying to market perceived value, because people would be unhappy if they dropped 2k-5k or more on an HDTV with very few controls?
3. If it is impossible to make proper picture adjustments without using a quantity of expensive test equipment, what is the normal consumer to do without dropping a bundle to have an ISF certified calibrator come every so often and adjust the TV? With my JVC LCoS set I used a calibration disk, and it certainly seemed to help. Do you have any comments on whether these calibration disks can be worthwhile?
Again thank you for a great read and looking forward to your next articles in MPC!
Submitted by Spencer Taylor on Sun, 06/13/2010 - 12:09am
1. I have a Samsung 61" LCoS LED projection set that is very similar to the Mitsubishi sets. I can tell you I LOVE my TV and that LED projection, IMHO, offers the best cost to benefit ratio.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001415FIG/ref=oss_product2. Manufacturers put lot's of controls in the TV because they have the ILLUSION of looking important. It's pure marketing. If a TV is calibrated, the only picture control I would think is needed would be to ajust for a "dark room" vs. "brite room" setting.
3. Yes, there is a number of inexpensive, and effective, "calibration" disks out there. I have always used DVE - Digital Video Essentials - and all my friend's do as well. There are Blu-ray (HD) and DVD versions available:
http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Video-Essentials-Basics-Blu-ray/dp/B000V6LST0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1276412527&sr=8-1
Submitted by RaymondSoneira on Fri, 06/11/2010 - 8:27pm
1. Mitsubishi's 6-color HDTVs add Cyan, Magenta and Yellow to the traditional Red, Green and Blue primaries. The goal is to increase the color gamut and also increase image brightness - peak brightness generally decreases as the gamut and color saturation of the primaries increase, so that's why they go to 6 primaries. But if you want to see the same accurate colors seen on the professional Rec.709 monitors at the studios where the content was produced then the color gamut needs to be reduced back down to the Rec.709 standard - the same principle as I discussed for the Quattron, although Mitsubishi is increasing the saturation of all of the primaries not just Yellow.
2. High quality professional studio monitors don't have any of the frivolous controls found in consumer models. They are unnecessary and actually decrease picture quality and accuracy. They are there as marketing gimmicks to make consumers think they are getting something special in a particular model. Unfortunately, if a manufacturer wanted to leave them out enough consumers would believe that something important was missing and would refuse to buy that model - so it's a vicious cycle.
3. Unfortunately there is no easy solution to adjusting and calibrating an HDTV or other display that comes incorrectly calibrated by the manufacturer. Professional calibration with instrumentation is the best, but it generally costs hundreds of dollars to get a trained technician to come to your house. There are both disc and software calibration tools that can help a non-expert consumer adjust their own displays. My company's DisplayMate is one such product. Without instrumentation the calibration has to be visually tweaked, but the end result is definitely a more accurate display.
Submitted by wineaux on Thu, 06/10/2010 - 10:30am
Please talk to us about the Local Dimming feature found on a few of the really high end LCD's. Does this feature actually work and accomplish something, or is it just another instance of the Emperor's New Clothes?
By the way, it was a FANTASTIC article and I look forward to seeing it put into practical use with MaximumPC's new display reviews as well as other future articles. Please continue this series and keep putting the pressure on the display manufacturers to come clean about their products. Heck, would getting a couple of Congressmen involved be enough of a sharp stick to prod the display manuacturers into adopting the standards that you suggest?
Submitted by RaymondSoneira on Thu, 06/10/2010 - 3:09pm
Maximum PC magazine has been a great platform for making people aware of all the display spec exaggeration and abuse issues, but the article is going to need more attention from more national press in order to get the ball rolling for accurate display and HDTV specs. I have been pointing out to manufacturers that this is actually in their interests because it will then be easier for them to market new and better displays when the specs are meaningful. My next step is to try to get Walmart behind this issue - they have tremendous market power and it will be great PR and a sales and marketing advantage for them if they publicize that they will only show accurate and meaningful specs to their customers. We'll see what they say...
Local Dimming is a relatively new technology for LCDs that divides the screen into 100 or more regions and then controls the LED backlight intensity for each region separately so that areas with dark content use a dimmer backlight setting and therefore produce a darker black luminance for that region. Sounds great... the problem is that you are trading one artifact (black brightness) for a whole bunch of other artifacts that are more visually objectionable - you get a noticeable patchwork of different black luminance levels, plus halos and blooming around unusually bright objects on darker backgrounds, plus reduced dynamic range within regions. It's expensive and only works during dark content in movies - but with annoying artifacts. Before buying try to watch Dark City, Escape from New York, and Chapter 14 of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which includes the trip through hyperspace. It's a personal preference as to which artifacts bother you the most.
Submitted by nfollin on Wed, 06/09/2010 - 5:49pm
So Basically, since I bought a decent TV (Sony Bravia KDL40v4100) to do stuff through HDMI I should set the output settings on my Xbox and PS3 to RGB and disable all corrections there and on the TV and keep the settings on the TV at factory settings with the display Brightness all the way up for maximum effect.
And also that the $300 vizio my older brother has shouldn't even be bothered with.
Also I'm guessing ATI's color control using brightness and contrast to display the color correction curve is the more appropriate term for such adjustments?
Submitted by Pusalieth on Tue, 06/08/2010 - 7:24am
First I would like to point out the logic that no one sees for some reason, if you Dr. Raymond Soneira are the one who tests this things for manufacteurs then thats the reason the specs are bad, other wise, what specs would they have to go by, and if they do another test themselves, then why would they pay you anything or use you when they've done it themselves, and third if they did do the latter option for more than one finding for objective testing, then the kinda eliminates the possiblity of them being wrong. Second big issue is if you do all this testing objective, why not list the specs you come up with on a website so no one is fouled any longer, thats supposed to be the reason you wrote this article or helped write it, why have you been holding the information this long, and if there was some sort of conspiracy againnst the consumer how come it hasn't hit big news, or been investigated by a federal agency, because if the manufacteurs are lying its fraud. Third big issue is the Rec. 709 color space, yes it is the color space for tv's, but its implying you can't see yellow because its not in the color space, meaning its not the Rec. 709 and it would be CIE 1931. And fourth big issue is why would any person go through a Ph.D for testing electronics, that would be something Jamie and Adam could do without any engineering degrees to the same compotency, especially at princeton where the tuition is significantly higher. (not disrespecting either Jamie nor Adam, I think they're both very
intelligent, but thats my point, it takes intelligence not degrees)Excuse my english if there are errors in this paragraph statement, and I hope this raises a few eye brows.
Submitted by BlazePC on Sun, 08/29/2010 - 11:28am
There are some good points (and questions raised) in this posting by Pusalieth and interesting that they seem to have fallen on deaf ears - with no response from author.
Submitted by roninnder on Thu, 06/10/2010 - 6:43pm
I would like to point out that no one else sees your logic because it makes no sense. You're ranting like a lunatic.
Submitted by ezelkow1 on Wed, 06/02/2010 - 6:39pm
You say the color gamut is limited to the srgb gamut, but what about xvycc which offers 1.8x the gamut of rgb and all the other new gamuts that fall under deep color with the hdmi 1.3 spec? If you have a tv and device that can output them you sure can use that expanded gamut. Since AVCHD and the ps3 both support it, as long as the item filmed with avchd used xvycc, or the video game on the ps3 was programmed to use the expanded gamut, you should see the difference.
Submitted by psybience on Sun, 06/06/2010 - 4:03pm
I find it odd that on page 2, a picture of specifications from the Sony XEL-1 is shown in order to demonstrate the absurd contrast ratio figures some manufacturers are using. The reason is because, for this particular monitor, a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio is probably true! If you look carefully, this is actually an OLED tv, which is very different to your average LCD tv/monitor. OLED screens, unlike normal LCD screens, do not require a backlight since each pixel is capable of producing it's own light, hence individual pixels can more or less turn off in order to show a true black.
Apart from this, I agree with pretty much everything else the article states.
Submitted by RaymondSoneira on Sun, 06/06/2010 - 5:17pm
You're right - our mistake - thanks for pointing this out. I failed to notice it when I proofed the article. The spec sheet figure on page 2 was the wrong model to use as an example because it's an OLED TV, so it may well have a true contrast ratio that large - I measured a true contrast ratio of 65,415 for the OLED on the Nexus One, but it's from Samsung, and 1,000,000 is certainly possible for an OLED display. It's an amusing piece of bad luck because the spec sheet from any other model would have proved the point.
Wow. That is an unfortunate
Submitted by JonPhillips on Wed, 06/09/2010 - 3:14pm
Wow. That is an unfortunate mistake. My bad. We asked our art department to find a spec sheet with an absurdly high dynamic contrast ratio spec, and this is what they came up with. I should have caught this.
Submitted by RaymondSoneira on Thu, 06/03/2010 - 10:47am
My fundamental point on color gamut is that the display needs to have the identical gamut that was used in producing the content being viewed - whatever that happens to be. Virtually all consumer content is being produced with sRGB/Rec.709 and that is why I recommended that gamut for consumers that watch standard content.
xvYCC is one of many extended color gamuts - and if you have content for it then by all means get a display that supports it. Just be aware of the following issues:
1. As I mentioned in the article the very saturated colors that lie outside of the sRGB/Rec.709 color space are much less common in nature so for most content you will not *NOTICE* much, if any, difference on properly calibrated displays.
2. Games and Demos designed for extended color gamuts will push and exploit the extremes of the gamut for obvious reasons. Enjoy them!
3. For LCDs there is a major downside to extended color gamuts - the color shift with viewing angle is substantially greater for larger color gamuts. I explain why and demonstrate it with measurement data and viewing tests in my LCD-Plasma Shoot-Out article. See Figure 5 and the paragraphs around it for a discussion. http://www.displaymate.com/LCD_Plasma_ShootOut.htm
4. If you get a native xvYCC display it will also need to have a factory calibration for sRGB/Rec.709. Very few manufacturers bother to do this properly for one, let alone two color gamuts. The Sony display that I used as an example in the Quattron side-bar was an xvYCC display that also got the sRGB/Rec.709 gamut exactly right - an impressive rarity.
5. If you get an xvYCC display now you are a super early adopter. It's going to take a long time (years) before much mainstream content will be produced with an extended color gamut... and there is a very good chance that the eventual production standard will be different from the current implementation.
6. While most displays are now plenty bright, be aware that there is generally a brightness penalty for extended color gamuts.
7. Lastly, extended color gamut displays are more expensive...
Submitted by heycarnut on Wed, 06/02/2010 - 5:54pm
As a long time user of your products, it is good to see your expertise in a mainstream publication put to good use: dispelling the kind of nonsense that is used in marketing PC monitors for consumers, and perpetuated in forums everywhere.
Perhaps in one of you future articles you might deal with the nonsense of claims that humans need (and can actually use) ridiculous frame rates effectively for gaming. We did deep research on this in analyzing some angel investing for a start-up with plans to produce 'boutique' PC gaming peripherals, and the results overwhelmingly showed the oft repeated claims in forums and by 'pro' gamers to be utterly baseless. The only reference we came up with 'for' the argument was the pseudoscience nonsense authored by a crop circle believer (see http://pcgamingtips.blogspot.com/2010/04/i-can-see-cxlvi-frames-per-second.html for my personal challenge to those that make these ridiculous claims - still no takers).
Please, do the gaming world a favor a cover this subject, both to prevent dollars being spent on monitors that offer no material benefit to the gamer, and to knock the 300FPS kooks off of their thrones.
Thanks again for a great first article, I look forward to more work by you in MaximumPC.
Rob
Submitted by RaymondSoneira on Thu, 06/03/2010 - 10:22am
You raise a very interesting question regarding high frame rates. Now I haven't done any visual tests in this area but I am also not aware of any objective scientifically valid display testing on this issue either. It would require two identical calibrated displays driven at different frame rates with a double blind methodology and lots of jury panelists and varied subject matter. There are certainly plenty of sloppy and incompetent studies...
There is a tremendous variation in visual response in humans. Some people see flicker at well over 100 Hz while most don't detect it at 60 Hz. Some people suffer major visual distress with DLP color wheel displays while most don't notice it and some people are very sensitive to judder. Gaming is also different from most viewing because gamers intently focus on particular moving objects. Within this context let me briefly mention some relevant points:
1. With CRTs high refresh rates seemed to make sense because the CRTs would run at whatever refresh rate you wanted your PC and game to drive them at. CRTs also have virtually no motion artifacts or blur. Flicker and smooth motion didn't seem to be the issues either. People wanted to run the games at higher refresh rates primarily because the games would proportionally clock and run faster.
2. However, non-CRT displays like LCDs and Plasmas generally only run their panels *internally* at a fixed native frame rate regardless of the fresh rate of the source video signal you feed them. For consumer displays that internal panel rate is generally 60 Hz, but 3D and stereo displays run at 120 Hz. So even if a display will accept high frame rate signals it is pointless to drive a display at any other rate because the screen only updates at the native internal frame rate of the panel.
3. If you drive a display at a frame rate that isn't an exact multiple of its native internal frame rate then there will be strobing beat patterns and/or torn frames being displayed on screen.
4. As the article points out the true Response Time for LCDs is around 50ms, so driving them faster than 60 Hz won't fix the on screen motion blur and motion artifacts.
Submitted by eugovector on Fri, 05/28/2010 - 4:26pm
Question, as you dismiss the need for brightness and contrast
controls saying that each display should be able to be properly
calibrated at the factory, are you then saying that manufacturing
tolerances are tight enough that such calibration would be accurate out
of the box? Also, given different home lighting senarios, wall colors,
and source devices, how would a factory calibration compensate for
percieved differences in various environments? What happens when, after
years of use, colors and britness shift in a display and there are no
brightness and contrast controls to fall back on?I think you've
got a wealth of good information, but I'm afraid your bravado may be
taking simple critique to the point that you are advocating extreme and
impractical design choices.I'd be interested in your response.
Thanks,
Marshall
Listen to The Real HT Info Podcast at realht.info
Submitted by RaymondSoneira on Wed, 06/02/2010 - 11:04am
First of all, I say that the Brightness and Contrast Controls are not necessary only for *DIGITAL SIGNAL INPUTS* (like HDMI) because their settings are fixed digital values and do not need any adjustment or readjustment ever. For this same reason there are no differences or special adjustments needed for all of the different digital (HDMI) source devices because the image data is digital and there are no transmission errors so the digital image data is delivered with perfect digital accuracy. Changing these controls from their proper digital values will only decrease picture quality.
In terms of controls you mention for compensating the perceived differences in home lighting or wall colors - none of the traditional user controls are useful for compensating for the perceived differences in home lighting or wall colors. There really aren’t any controls in an HDTV that can be used to compensate for color perception issues other than perhaps the color temperature of the white point – and that is likely to cause more harm than good. The only control that is useful under these circumstances is the Backlight control, which adjusts the screen brightness and is the proper way to adjust for ambient lighting level - but not its color.
Similarly none of the traditional user controls are useful for compensating for the aging effects that you mention. Aging for most HDTVs is now typically over 60,000 hours, so the display is unlikely to age noticeably under typical consumer use. And if it does, to correct for any sort of aging you need test patterns, a spectroradiometer and access to the RGB Drive and Offset controls. Consumers generally don’t, so it’s better to leave things alone…
If the factory has not properly calibrated the HDTV then you also can't accurately adjust it without test patterns and instrumentation. Most consumers just wind up semi-randomly misadjusting the available user controls because they lack the equipment or expertise. Messing with the user controls may make the picture look better some of the time – but generally just for images similar to the ones used during the tweaking.
Unless you have the right equipment and expertise, it’s better just to leave the controls as is and just take the HDTV off its default Vivid mode and set it to one of the Standard or Movie modes. With digital signal HDMI inputs HDTVs should really arrive with an accurate factory calibration so that they work perfectly straight out of the box with absolutely no consumer user adjustments needed other than screen brightness. It’s unfortunate that we aren’t there yet – in part because of all of the useless controls that manufacturers add to consumer HDTVs. BTW, high-end professional displays don’t have any of these phony controls. However, some manufacturers are much better at accurate factory calibration and picture quality than others. With my Display Technology articles I’m trying to make everyone more aware of these issues.
Submitted by onewithazureskies on Thu, 05/27/2010 - 4:41am
I was totally blown away by the quality of writing and depth of research in this article. I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't reading Anandtech. Dr. Soneira confirms what we all knew about pixel response times and then goes on to show how every other marketing spec is also total B.S.
His discussion of color space makes total sense to me as one of the biggest problems I saw as a student working in digital graphic arts was moving content between different color spaces. By far it is more important that the final output match the color space used in creating content than it is to have the largest gamut. The size of the gamut says nothing about the precision of the colors produced within that gamut. When the content and the display have the same gamut, there is a 1:1 mapping between the requested and displayed colors.
This is the most compelling article I have read on MPC online or in print in a long while. Thanks Dr. Soneira, I hope to see you on MPC more often.
Submitted by kelemvor4 on Tue, 05/25/2010 - 9:17pm
I don't fully understand your comments about color gamut, specifically why a larger gamut would be bad. Wouldn't a properly calibrated monitor be able to accurately represent an image (with an embedded ICC profile) while still being calibrated for a wider gamut? Unless I'm totally off base here (which is likely) it seems like NTSC provides a much wider gamut than sRGB in fact coming close to the gamut of Adobe RGB.
Any chance you could provide a link to another document or reccomend a good book on the subject so that I might further my understanding?
Submitted by Richard Salmon on Mon, 07/12/2010 - 9:57am
There is another factor here which Raymond has not addressed. The manufacturers all describe their displays in terms of % of NTSC. Quite apart from the problem that they calculate this using xy colour-space rather than u'v' (because it exaggerates the numbers) the xy space is so non-linear as to make the figure meaning-less.
However, by far the biggest fact which the marketing people seem to have missed is that no TV system or TV display has ever used the NTSC colour gamut. It was defined initially as the gamut to be used for the first colour TV system, but by the time the system was actually launched it was discovered that the efficiency (light out to energy in) of the planned phosphors was very poor, and instead the SMPTE phosphors/primaries were used for the NTSC TV system. In Europe,we standardised on EBU primaries. For HDTV the world standardised on Rec709 primaries, which are pretty much mid-way between the two standard-definition primary sets, and so close to both of them that the change is effectively un-noticeable. When I ask display manufacturers at conferences why they use % NTSC, if they are marketing types they say "because we always have, and everyone else does). If I ask the company's engineers they say "we know it's ridiculous, but the marketing guys won't do anthing else".
Just want to add how much this entire article chimes with my own views. We tried to bring some order to the chaos by publishing EBU Tech 3321:
EBU Guidelines for Consumer Flat Panel Displays (FPDs)
http://tech.ebu.ch/webdav/site/tech/shared/tech/tech3321.pdf
and some manufacturers have actally taken up a few of our suggestions (making 1:1 pixel mapping a more easy to find option, for example, rather than forcing overscan.)
Submitted by RaymondSoneira on Wed, 05/26/2010 - 1:18pm
In principle, it is perfectly fine for a display to have a very wide *NATIVE* color gamut, and then allow the user to select from any of several other smaller FACTORY CALIBRATED color gamuts, such as the sRGB/Rec.709 for consumer computer, HDTV and digital photography applications, and the Adobe RGB for professional imaging applications, as two examples. In principle that is how a native Adobe RGB monitor should work. Monitors that can do this are considerably more expensive.
In practice, monitors are seldom accurately calibrated for more than one color gamut. And if they are not factory calibrated for every color gamut that you need you can't calibrate them yourself unless you have expensive instrumentation to measure and adjust the chromaticity coordinates and luminance for each R,G,B primary color.
The WORST way to calibrate a display is with ICC or other profiles because they are generally implemented in software. For standard 24-bit color there are only 256 intensity levels and the software does its calibration work by reducing and rearranging those precious 256 intensity levels to get the required color mixtures and intensity scales for the calibration transformation that is executed for every image pixel. As a result there is often a significant reduction in the number of intensity levels that will be transmitted to the display, which causes false contouring and irregularities in both color and intensity. That's a big penalty for this sort of calibration.
The BEST way to calibrate a display is to have the calibration processing adjustments all made internally within the display hardware because it can preserve those precious 256 intensity levels using 10-bit or higher digital interpolation processing and/or internal analog signal processing (because the LCD panel itself is actually an analog device that is driven with analog voltages even when the front end signal inputs are digital signals). This type of calibration is performed using the display's own manufacturer supplied controls - both end user and field service controls.
Submitted by kache on Wed, 06/30/2010 - 2:36pm
Does this mean that all the calibrating devices, like the 200€ Spyder3, are useless?
Submitted by rushevents on Tue, 05/25/2010 - 10:44am
Cool article, great info so which HDTV's should we consider to buy?
Submitted by RaymondSoneira on Thu, 05/27/2010 - 6:12am
I am reposting an earlier comment by Jon Phillips, the Editorial Director of Maximum PC:
This article should only be considered an entry point into a relatively vast subject. Every person who's commented that we should be providing more practical material -- i.e., content focused on buying advice -- is right on target, and we're in the early stages of developing that article now. (Rather than stuffing the whole kitchen sink into a single article, we felt it made more sense to dole out the various topics across a series of articles. And now that we've explained all the doublespeak that goes into display marketing, we can proceed with useful strategies on how to confront (or rather sidestep entirely) that doublespeak.)
Submitted by lukeman3000 on Tue, 05/25/2010 - 8:11am
I'm just wondering why the contrast control is disabled on some computer lcd monitors (specifically a dell) when the DVI input is being used?
Even if the contrast control doesn't actually control the contrast of the image, it does seem to have a significant affect on the brightness of the screen, and because I can't change it when using DVI, my dual-screen setup looks strange. My VGA monitor looks nice and bright, but the monitor using DVI looks dim in comparison because the contrast control is locked out.
Is that because technically the correct image is being shown on the DVI monitor, and my VGA monitor is just cranked up too high? Whatever the case, it would be nice to be able to make the other monitor using DVI a little brighter b/c it just seems to dim too dim to me, even when the brightness is up to 100%. It's possible that the monitor had a problem; I took it back anyways and ordered a different one off ebay which I believe allows for contrast (brightness) control in DVI mode. So hopefully I won't run into the same problem again..
Submitted by RaymondSoneira on Tue, 05/25/2010 - 10:29am
You are restating two points that I made in the article:
(1) the Contrast Control does not control the image contrast, it controls the brightness of the image by changing the amplitude of the video signal. It has no effect on image contrast.
(2) When a display is running with digital signal inputs there is no reason to adjust the video signal gain (which is the function of the Contrast Control) because the digital signal maximum is fixed at precisely 255 and should not be not be adjusted from that value for normal consumer applications.
The proper way to adjust the brightness of all LCD displays is by controlling the backlight brightness. All but the very cheapest LCDs have a control that does that, although it comes with many different names. Make sure the backlight control is set to 100 percent. Note that as stated in the article a control that is labeled "Brightness" generally controls the black level and not the peak brightness.
As to your question that the display is too dim, there are many possible reasons, including a defective unit, but there are many other possible adjustments that could affect this including a Color Temperature control, and RGB Drive Controls that control the white point setting. Note that not all displays have these controls. You might want to hit the factory reset on the display and see if that helps.
Good article over all but he
Submitted by whitneymr on Sat, 05/22/2010 - 2:14pm
Good article over all but he is out of the loop on color space and color bit depth. As a working photo pro the bigger the color space and the deeper the bits the more realistic the output.
All the the pro level DSLR's are shooting 12 or 14 bit color so if you try processing in Photoshop at 16 bit color but your looking at your work with a crappy 8 or even worse 6 bit monitor your in for a BAD surprise when you output this to a 8-10 ink printer that can handle color spaces much larger than RGB. Whatt happens is your pretty picture on your monitor becomes a mess when printed, there are colors there you never saw and you get color shifts on what you can see.
I would love to hear a response on this from some one more knowledgeable than me form EIZO or Lacie.
Submitted by EFK on Mon, 05/24/2010 - 3:01pm
I completely agree. nice article, but there are certain things I do not agree with. I work a lot with graphics and colors, both on the computer as in real life painting art.
Old celluloid photo's are much richer in colors and contrast, yet these are still very limited too. Reality is much, much more vivid. If you've ever seen a Van Gogh from nearby you'll realize that reproduction techniques are very poor.
The 24 bit color range is very limited and I certainly do see differences in neighbouring shades, despite the claims that human vision does not see it. You certainly do. I'd like to have at least 16 shades per step extra. 64 or even 256 shades would be better.
The common primary colors in computer displays are though to work with. Blue is dark, red is quite bright and green is extremely bright. These colors are also depictions, 'picked' from the broad visible electromagnetic spectrum. Sure, you can get basically whatever color you are looking for by properly mixing, but it's very artificial. There is no such thing as the basic 'green', 'red' and 'blue'. Colors are relative. Good graphics/displays would scan/emit the entire visible spectrum and would register/display polarization too. Of course resolution should be much higher.
Hopefully graphics will improve. It's 2010 now and I am still seeing pixels and poor colors. There hasn't changed that much since the Commodore Amiga 1200 really although that's almost 20 years ago. That's basically the reason whyI read the great article. We are bombarded with new displays promising the skies but I see hardly any real improvements. Worse, some aspects of computer graphics are degrading. And it seems that the industry is just fine. Stick to 24 bit colors at rather low resolutions in very limited brightness/contrast ranges to eternity. Hopefully not.
Submitted by EFK on Mon, 05/24/2010 - 3:04pm
Sorry, that reply was under the wrong comment.
Submitted by RaymondSoneira on Mon, 05/24/2010 - 2:45pm
If you reread my article you'll see that I recommend the standard sRGB/Rec.709 color space for *CONSUMER CONTENT* because it is all produced in that standard color space... and I also say that imaging *PROs* often use extended color spaces, which is great as long as you have a professional display that is calibrated for that special extended color space.
Submitted by lukeman3000 on Mon, 05/24/2010 - 12:45pm
What kind of response are you looking for? Your points are valid, but they come across as making you seem like you feel that author disagrees with you.
The author recognizes that there are "specialized color gamuts for specialized applications", meaning that he is not necessarily downplaying the importance of a greater color gamut entirely. But to the average consumer, it is largely unnecessary.
In regards to Adobe RGB/displays, he says this:
"Just be aware that if you use the Adobe gamut, you will also need a display that produces the Adobe gamut, and only a small fraction of consumer displays can do this."
This seems to imply that there might be some sort of a problem if you do not use a display that produces the Adobe gamut, and I'm guessing that the example you gave is one of them.
Obviously he recognizes this too, so I do not understand the relevance of either of your points..
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