LCD TV’s tend to use a 3 color setup which includes red, green and blue to reproduce an array of colors on screen. Sharp have decided to up the number of primary colors used from the traditional 3 to 5 colors. The 2 extra colors to be used are cyan and yellow which can now reproduce 99% of all visible colors on the screen. Sharp call the system Multi-Primay-Color Technology which will be integrated in to their line of LCD TV’s soon.
The reason Sharp went with a 5 color setup was because regular 3 color setups have difficulties recreating certain blues and other variations needed to make a nice picture. One problem of using more colors is that power consumption also jumps up. Sharp have managed to fix this by making the backlight more economical which has levelled consumption back to the normal range.
These screens wont hit the mass market soon as they will first start appearing in museums and other public locations. The first screen is currently available to look at over at SID and measures a hefty 60.5 inches and has a HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. The contrast ratio is calculated to be 2000:1.
I’ve always wondered if jsut three colours were enough to create the full color range that was possible. but i’m more concerned if this will make for darker whites (assuming that all five colours at once won’t produce the same white we’re used to, and that if they only used 3 of the 5 it will mean too much dark space)