Have you ever wondered why the colors in your pictures when displayed on your monitor aren’t as good as in real life? Or do you miss your old clunky CRT because everything looked better than on your fancy LCD screen?
Well you aren’t alone, the majority of consumer LCD Monitors do not have as many colors as a clunky CRT and for that reason pictures and videos can look a bit dull, this can be especially problematic in the photography and movie industry.
The most advanced consumer monitor can probably give you 16 million colors, and while that may sound like a lot of colors, it isn’t enough for that crisp picture you may want. So during Connected World 2008 in Berlin, HP Introduced the new HP DreamColor LP2480zx, a 24inch professional display that can support over 1 billion colors in native mode.
The monitor was designed specifically for the movie industry with companies such as Dreamworks in mind. Companies like Dreamworks Animation for example faced a problem where color changed from monitor to monitor, and they found themselves calibrating these monitors every 2 to 3 days, and sometimes when the color looked good on the monitor when they previewed it on a big screen the colors weren’t the same. They also found themselves on eBay searching for CRT monitors monitors to buy because the color in those were more reliable.
So HP worked with Dreamworks to develop the new Dreamcolor display. The Dreamcolor display does not need to be calibrated as often as a typical LCD, saves a lot more space than a clunky CRT and is a fraction of the cost of similar displays designed for the industry. For those curious as to how much the monitor cost, it will retail for about $3500.
While in Los Angeles 3 weeks ago, I had the chance to test out the Dreamcolor display and I have to say I was impressed, and so was everyone else who attended the event.
They were impressed because you could easily switch between different color schemes with the click of 2 buttons. There was also a PIP mode which I liked a lot. The monitor also did seem to offer crisper pictures than other monitors in the room. The picture below is of a Dreamcolor display side by side an Apple Cinema Display, both with default settings.
Can you tell which monitor is which? I am sure you can tell the monitor on the right hand side seems to have a crisper picture. The right monitor is also the Dreamcolor display. Both monitors were set to the default settings.
Here is another image of the monitor.
The above picture is not a side by side comparison, but you can still tell that the monitor is showing us a lot of colors.
While the Dreamcolor display may be a bit pricey for the average user like you and I, for the Movie industry this is a extremely affordable and prices will only go down, so who knows we may have Dreamcolor displays on our desk soon.
When I first looked at a Dreamcolor display, it almost felt as if I were looking out a window. If you are a photographer, and print pictures out. With a Dreamcolor Printer and a Dreamcolor monitor, what you see on your screen is what prints out the printer.
The Dreamcolor displays are available now from HP.
Comments: (6)
on Sat, Jun 14th, 2008 at 07:13 PM
Jesus that is amazing. I work for a PR firm and we could definetly use something like this.
on Sat, Jun 14th, 2008 at 07:32 PM
I just sent this article to my boss lets see if he buys some
on Sat, Jun 14th, 2008 at 10:21 PM
if you get them and get to play with them, let me know how you like.
Kristopher Windsor on Sat, Jun 14th, 2008 at 11:48 PM
16 million colors is the typical RGB amount, which is the typical limit for computers and camera, so how could old CRT monitors show more than this limit? They cannot.
I don’t know about color calibration, but I recall a program called “Adobe Gamma” that probably resolved this for me in the past.
“They were impressed because you could easily switch between different color schemes with the click of 2 buttons.”
Well mine can change brightness / contrast presets with one button, so that works well enough for me. :-]]
on Sun, Jun 15th, 2008 at 12:05 AM
Opps it looks like I didn’t explain it right, I didn’t mean to say CRT have more colors, I meant to say that they required less calibration which is what I was told at dreamworks. Thanks for pointing that out
BTW you can change brightness with the click of one button, but on the dreamworks you can switch between Adobe RBG or some customized one you may have.
Also i forgot to mention these are 10bit monitors so you will need a 10bit graphics card to run them at their full potential. However you don’t need a 10bit graphics card to use the monitor.
on Mon, Jun 16th, 2008 at 12:10 PM
I need new display!
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