A Better TV Than UHD, AMOLED Burn-in, and More -- Short Courses and Seminars at DW

By Tom Fiske

One of my favorite parts of Display Week is the educational component. Every year, SID brings together an impressive group of display industry experts to share their expertise via short courses and seminars.

Sunday is the day for short courses; four-hour sessions that cover the basics of displays and related topics. This year, on Sunday afternoon, I was able to stop in at Jim Larimer’s (ImageMetrics LLC) short course on color science and its relevance to imaging and displays. Jim started out with the famous image of “the dress” that set the internet aflame a couple of months ago and continued with a lively description of the history and origins of color science; including forays into physiology and evolutionary biology. Dr. Larimer held the attention of the room with a very cogent and thorough explanation of color matching and color difference metrics, the role of context in color appearance, and contrast and luminance in real and rendered scenes. I would have appreciated a bit more time on the application of the principles of color science to modern displays, however. For a more detailed look at this course, see reporter Geoff Walker’s blog post, “What Color is This Dress?”

On Monday, we get a comprehensive series of ninety-minute seminars that provide a practical overview of several types of display related technologies. One memorable seminar was “High-Dynamic-Range Imaging and Displays,” given by Scott Daly and Timo Kunkel from Dolby Laboratories, Inc. Dolby’s version of this technology (i.e. “Dolby Vision”), which it has been working on for some years, is scheduled to be available to consumers later this summer. Daly and Kunkel described how the technology delivers about 6+ orders of magnitude of luminance dynamic range - -yielding super-bright highlights and good shadow detail simultaneously. Typical LCDs can only render about 3.5 orders of magnitude of dynamic range. Dolby Vision also accommodates expanded color gamut. I believe that this technology is much more compelling than 4K UHD -- I know what’s going to be on my Christmas list.

Ed Kelley (Keltek Research) is editor-in-chief of the “Information Display Measurements Standard” published by SID and the ICDM. He gave a whirlwind tour of important display metrology issues in his well-attended seminar. Ed is one of my favorite presenters and he did not disappoint. His slides serve as an important reference and remind about important factors to be considered when making display measurements. In Ed’s considered opinion, it’s not worth making a measurement if you’re not going to do it right.

Professor Jun Souk of Hanyang University delivered a seminar on the basic operation and challenges facing AMOLED displays. A variety of performance, lifetime, manufacturing, and cost issues -- especially compared to LCDs -- represents a significant impediment to the continued viability of the technology. He called out backplane performance and cost, patterning, lifetime, and image burn-in as particular concerns. AMOLED continues to chase LCD in cost and resolution