The "New Toys" Thread

...that is produced artificially via dimming the back lighting, which sucks if you watch a movie that has lots of change in bright/dark parts...
 
...that is produced artificially via dimming the back lighting, which sucks if you watch a movie that has lots of change in bright/dark parts...

Can you give an example? I can't think of a movie like that offhand, and I want to see what you're talking about.
 
Dimming the backlight would lower the contrast, making the backlight brighter and increasing the quality of the polarising filters raises the contrast.
 
it's only dimmed locally, hence increasing the contrast, but only between larger regions, since you can't dimm each pixel individually.
 
Contrast is a ratio of brightest and darkest pixel.
With backlight all the way down, pixels can't get very bright.
With backlight up, pixels can't get very dark.
Half-assed solution: dynamically change the backlight depending on what's displayed. So instantaneously the high contrast is not achievable, but dynamically it's possible, and doesn't look good anywhere but in a spec sheet imho.
 
^ Same thoughts here... Some friends of mine have that on their Samsungs, and most have turned it off, because it simply take a little bit of time when the picture gets dark for the backlight to go down. Maybe LED backlight screens will be better?

Or simply get a really good Plasma if you wanna brag about contrast ratio...
 
I read somewhere that the human eye can not distinguish contrasts over 700:1 anyway.
 
I read somewhere that the human eye can not distinguish contrasts over 700:1 anyway.

Hmm...i'm gonna say "link, or it's not true" because I think I can absolutely notice much higher ratios.

Buba: I believe LED-lit monitors can do better, but still not perfect.

A typical backlit LCD screen is always lit, and the black areas you see are the LCD overlay trying to block the light from getting through. The darkness of the black is where LCD's typically fail. They can do white, but they can't get a very black-black. An LED-lit screen can turn off much much much finer-detailed areas of lighting to aid in creating absolute-black, since there's no light...not just a dimmed vague area of the screen.
 
NecroJoe, I read it on another forum for HDTVs, so linking that wouldn't provide much in the way of scientific evidence. Maybe google can turn something up.
 
Maybe because of the way it's measured... Between colours, between shades of gray, etc

All I know is my monitor claims to be 1000:1 and the black isn't black at all.
 
Is there something I'm missing here?

Why would you need a television set capable of showing a 20 000:1 contrast ratio when modern film emulsion (which is still the one source with most dynamic range) only can capture a range of 10 stops which is 1024:1?
 
Well, it's basically what I said. As far as I know, there is no recording medium that can record more than about 1024:1 in contrast ratio, consumer video cameras are at best 32:1 (5 stops on the aperture), professional video cameras somewhere in between. On either side of that scale, there would just be pure black and pure white, no details

I also doubt that broadcasting standards allow showing a contrast rate as high as 20 000:1.

So unless there are video games that have 20 000:1 contrast range, I can't fathom why you would need a television set capable of showing that kind of dynamic range. I either smell a marketing ploy or they've just created technology that no one really needs....
 
I think it's maybe just different vocabulary, similar to the 1,000MB=1GB vs 1,024MB=1GB.

I can't tell you what the numbers really mean, but look at two TVs side-by-side with the same specs but different contrast, and it seems noticeable.
 
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Lenovo Thinkpad R61i, sitting on top of the IBM Thinkpad T40 (probably made in the same factory) that it's replacing. I can now say for certain that the brick shithouse Thinkpad era is long over. Build quality and little niggles on this thing are more noticeable than they should be, though still better than most Dells or HPs. Then again, it's a cheap new laptop with WinXP, so I'm mostly happy; so long as I don't grab the sides of the display for any reason, I won't notice the floppy plastics.

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Epiphone Les Paul '57 Goldtop reissue. I've already annoyed the neighbors with it while plugged into a very nondescript Crate practice amp. P-90s are epic.

Oh, and looky, I got myself another MR2!
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