Sharp Quattron: Gimmick or Genius?

NutBucket

Lifer
Aug 30, 2000
27,150
635
126
I know this announcement happened at CES but now that the marketing has started what do you think about Sharp adding a 4th pixel to a LCD panel?

Someone on AVS Forum theorized that perhaps the 4th pixel was added to boost brightness...advantageous when 3D displays become more prominent. His argument was that DLP has basically followed the same path (increasing the number of colors on the color wheels).

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=18356233#post18356233

Thoughts?

Note: I'm not in the market, just intrigued.
 

Fallen Kell

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
6,207
537
126
Personally, gimmick. At least in this generation. For it to be really useful, the content will need to have been encoded in a different colorspace than RGB. Until things are using CIELAB or similar, adding the yellow subpixel will not do anything but introduce yellow push in the image.

It is a chicken and egg problem, though. No one will encode in CIELAB until there are displays which will take advantage of it, and no one wants to make a display unless there is content. Well, this is the display without the content (which probably can not even handle CIELAB encodings anyway, and simply just does some conversion of the RGB to utilize the added yellow).

For DLP, increasing the colors on the color wheel made a difference because the wheel was spinning and the display only showing that particular color at one time and relying on the human eye/brain to merge the colors together. An LCD displays all the colors at the same time, which is completely different. The "brightness" of a LCD is simply from its backlight technology, not the colors available in the subpixels. The yellow subpixel simply adds additional yellow push/shift to the image.
 
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Wreckem

Diamond Member
Sep 23, 2006
9,547
1,127
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By all accounts they look no better than any other high end LED LCD, which still arent on par with high end plasmas. I dont think these will sell well so I doubt it will be a genious gimmick as they are crazy or smoking crack when it comes to their MSRP pricing. Compared to other high end LED/LCDs they are over priced, compared to the high end plasmas they are way overpriced.

Its summed up by LE920 40" = $2899 MSRP. The 46" is $3499 MSRP. Samsungs UN55C8000 MSRP is also $3499. Samsungs PN63C8000 is a hair higher at $3699. The Panasonic 58" VT 25 is IRCC $2999.
 
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Cstefan

Golden Member
Oct 6, 2005
1,510
0
71
Image doesnt compare to any other good LED tv better or worse. IMO of course.


OH MY