Samsung Achieve Massive Contrast Ratio Using Selective TV Backlighting
As LED backlighting matures, the initial boon of lower power consumption than the traditional cold-cathode methods has been joined by some real advances thanks to lateral thinking by manufacturers. Samsung's latest unveiling, a 70-inch HD LCD TV, takes advantage of the fact that each part of the LED backlight is individually switchable, producing a TV with an incredible contrast ratio of 500,000:1
They do it by selectively turning off the backlight in areas where the image is dark, obviously something impossible to do when you have a uniform cold-cathode panel. They're calling the technology "local dimming", and it's joined by advances in LED scanning that reduce flicker and ghosting. On top of all that, energy consumption is apparently halved.
TVs using the technology – including this 70-incher – will be on the market in the second half of 2007.
