Sharp develops five-color display

Jake Widman
Friday, 29 May 2009 23:45

Your IT - Home IT

A new LCD display technology from Sharp adds two colors to the standard RGB for a wider color gamut with less energy. The "Multi-Primary-Color Technology" adds cyan and yellow to the usual red, green, and blue colors that make up an on-screen image.

Cyan and yellow (along with magenta and black) are two of the colors used in standard four-color printing as seen in magazines and newspapers.

According to Sharp, adding these to colors to the display expands the range of colors the it can reproduce (its "color gamut") to more than 99 percent of "real" surface colors.

Sharp cites "the color of the sea (emerald blue), brass instruments (golden yellow), and roses (crimson red)" as hues that standard three-color screens find difficult to render accurately.

It's a trick similar to that used in higher-end inkjet printers, which often add a light cyan and light magenta ink to the standard four for improved color reproduction.

Sharp claims that the technology reduces energy consumption by using the light produced by an LCD screen's backlight more efficiently.

The company will be displaying a 60-inch, 1920-x-1080-pixel prototype at the Society for Information Display symposium being held in San Antonio, Texas next week.