NEC has introduced what it describes as the world’s first market-ready LCD with LED-backlight technology. The SpectraView Reference 21, also known as the SpectraView LCD2180 WideGamut LED, is a 21.3-inch LCD monitor with a colour-calibration system for precise colour matching and a resolution of 1,600 × 1,200 pixels. It uses a Super Advanced Super Fine Technology (SA-SFT) dual-IPS panel and LED backlighting. Series production of the wide-gamut display with integrated LED backlighting began in early June 2005, and the unit is available now. No pricing information has yet been released.
Digital image processing, colour-processing systems, colour printers and other photographic input and output systems have recently undergone substantial technical development. Alongside higher resolutions, colour-gamut and colour-depth reproduction have also advanced significantly. A standardised colour space enables consistent colour reproduction across digital platforms and devices from image capture through output. Professional DTP and colour-proofing users, specialist image-processing systems and industrial four-colour printing presses require precise colour consistency across the widest possible gamut.
At the beginning of the digital chain, including image capture, Adobe RGB has become an established colour space, and printing and hard-copy technology has followed. NEC says the technical challenge was to develop monitor technology capable of displaying the complete Adobe RGB gamut while maintaining colour accuracy throughout every stage of colour processing. The SpectraView Reference 21 is designed to meet those requirements.
LCD technology has gained ground in the monitor market because of advantages including image quality, ergonomics, lower energy consumption, reduced space requirements and low total cost of ownership. New developments now allow LCD monitors to serve applications that require a wide colour gamut, previously the domain of conventional CRT displays. A standard LCD uses white backlighting, normally from a mercury fluorescent tube, behind colour-matrix LCD filters. The filter matrices digitally adjust light transmission to create a greyscale image, with colour supplied by filters in front of the panel. The backlight therefore determines colour temperature and the available gamut, typically around 72 percent of NTSC, compared with roughly 84 percent for CRT displays.
RGB LED backlighting instead uses red, green and blue LEDs to generate white light, allowing a larger range of spectral colours to be reproduced. NEC says the monitor can display more than 100 percent of both the Adobe RGB and NTSC colour gamuts. The LED backlight also allows the white point to be adjusted precisely between 5000 K and 9300 K without loss of brightness. Rather than changing the white temperature in the LCD layer, as with conventional CCFL backlighting, the LED backlight changes its own white point by varying the mix of red, green and blue. A feedback sensor maintains the preset performance characteristics. NEC says this feedback system produces consistent colour after only one minute.
Integrated 10-bit gamma tables for red, green and blue are intended to provide precise gamma correction for hardware calibration. With 1,021 tonal values per colour, the monitor is designed to reproduce fine colour and greyscale gradations with high precision. SpectraView Reference 21 also includes ColorComp for correcting uniformity in Delta E values. Factory profile validation records measurements that are interpolated to correct colour accuracy across all 1,600 × 1,200 pixels. The supplied SpectraView Profiler software provides hardware calibration of brightness and white point and creates ICC profiles.
