Home Theater Geeks 484: RGB LED

Summary

Podcast Summary: Home Theater Geeks 484: RGB LED

Podcast Information:

• Title: All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio)
• Host/Author: TWiT
• Episode: Home Theater Geeks 484: RGB LED
• Release Date: May 29, 2025

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Introduction to RGB LED Technology In the May 29, 2025 episode of Home Theater Geeks, host Scott Wilkinson delves into the cutting-edge RGB LED technology unveiled at CES 2025. This new advancement in LED TV technology promises to challenge the dominance of OLED displays by introducing a more versatile and vibrant lighting system.

Technical Overview of RGB LED vs. Existing Technologies Scott begins by clarifying that RGB LED TVs are essentially LCD TVs enhanced with RGB (Red, Green, Blue) LED backlights, specifically utilizing mini LEDs. Unlike traditional backlights that use solely blue LEDs, RGB LED backlights incorporate red, green, and blue LEDs, allowing each LED to emit full-color light, which can be finely controlled to produce a broad spectrum of colors.

“Instead of blue LEDs in the background, it uses red, green, and blue LEDs in each mini LED, making each one full color and fully controllable,” [01:35].

He contrasts this with the conventional QLED structure, which relies on blue mini LEDs combined with a quantum dot enhancement film to produce white light. This traditional method results in a lower-resolution black and white image in the backlight layer, which then passes through color filters to create the final image.

Advantages of RGB LED Technology The RGB LED setup offers several significant advantages:

• Increased Brightness: Hisense showcased a prototype reaching 10,000 nits of brightness, far surpassing the current maximum of 4,000 nits in standard consumer content.
• Reduced Blooming: Enhanced control over individual LEDs minimizes the bleeding of bright images against dark backgrounds.
• Wider Color Gamut and Increased Color Volume: Hisense claims the technology achieves 97% of BT 2020 and boasts the largest color volume compared to existing technologies like W OLED and QD OLED, ensuring colors remain saturated across a broader range of brightness levels.

“Hisense claims 97% of BT 2020 and a larger color volume, which means colors remain saturated over a greater range of brightness levels,” [04:15].

Additionally, the RGB LED backlights provide a superior color spectrum, particularly in the red and green ranges, contributing to richer and more vibrant colors.

Sony's Implementation and Prototype Reviews Scott updates listeners on Sony's involvement, noting that Sony demonstrated the RGB LED technology at their Tokyo headquarters. Although Scott wasn't part of the exclusive journalist trip, reports from attendees, including Ryan Juaniata of Wired, have been overwhelmingly positive. The Sony prototype reportedly outperforms the Bravia 9 and even the Bravia 8 OLED in color richness and brightness.

“According to Ryan Juaniata at Wired, the prototype had richer and more saturated colors than the Bravia 9... and it was clearly brighter,” [06:50].

However, there are caveats. While the RGB LED technology excels in brightness and color volume, Sony noted that black levels do not yet match those of OLED displays, a typical limitation of LCD-based technologies.

Comparison to OLED and QD OLED Scott provides a comprehensive comparison between RGB LED, OLED, and QD OLED technologies:

• Brightness: RGB LED TVs significantly outperform OLEDs, offering much higher brightness levels.
• Color Volume: RGB LED holds the highest color volume, surpassing both QD OLED and traditional Mini LED LCD TVs.
• Off-Axis Performance: Surprisingly, Sony's prototypes exhibit commendable off-axis performance, a common weakness in LCD-based TVs, although Scott remains cautiously optimistic pending personal reviews.
• Black Levels: OLEDs still maintain superior black levels compared to RGB LED, a critical factor for many viewers.

“It might give OLED some real competition… It’s likely to be very expensive, maybe more than OLED, which is already more expensive than any type of LCD TV,” [07:50].

Release Details and Market Potential The Hisense 116-inch UX Trichroma RGB TV is slated for release in 2025, while Sony anticipates bringing RGB LED TVs to the market by 2026. Scott speculates that the high costs associated with RGB LED technology could be a barrier initially, possibly rendering these TVs more expensive than their OLED counterparts.

Conclusion Scott concludes that RGB LED technology represents an exciting development in the TV industry, offering substantial improvements in brightness and color capabilities. While there are still questions regarding off-axis performance and pricing, RGB LED TVs are poised to introduce significant competition to existing OLED and QD OLED displays. Scott encourages enthusiasts to stay tuned for further reviews as the technology becomes more widely available.

“It's a very interesting technology and I wanted to share it with you as a sort of a preview of things to come. Not a dull moment in the TV industry, that's for sure,” [09:15].

For listeners interested in delving deeper or having their questions addressed, Scott invites them to engage via htgwit TV and reminds them of the ad-free options available through Club TWiT.

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Notable Quotes:

• “Instead of blue LEDs in the background, it uses red, green, and blue LEDs in each mini LED, making each one full color and fully controllable,” [01:35].
• “Hisense claims 97% of BT 2020 and a larger color volume, which means colors remain saturated over a greater range of brightness levels,” [04:15].
• “According to Ryan Juaniata at Wired, the prototype had richer and more saturated colors than the Bravia 9... and it was clearly brighter,” [06:50].
• “It might give OLED some real competition… It’s likely to be very expensive, maybe more than OLED, which is already more expensive than any type of LCD TV,” [07:50].
• “It's a very interesting technology and I wanted to share it with you as a sort of a preview of things to come. Not a dull moment in the TV industry, that's for sure,” [09:15].

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This episode of Home Theater Geeks provides an insightful exploration into the future of TV display technology, highlighting the promising advancements of RGB LED and its potential impact on the market. Whether you're a tech enthusiast or a home theater aficionado, understanding these developments can help you make informed decisions about your next television purchase.

Transcript

[Scott Wilkinson]

In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I talk about a new LED TV technology, so stay tuned.

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[Scott Wilkinson]

Hey there Scott Wilkinson here, the home theater geek. In this episode I'm going to talk about a new technology that was introduced at CES 2025 for LED TVs. What are really LCD TVs with LED backlights and more specifically mini LED TVs. Hisense and Samsung at CES introduced this new technology that I it looks like it might give OLEDs a run for their money. It's surprising for me to say that, but it could be. And since then Sony announced that it's also been working on the same technology. It's called RGB LED. Instead of blue LEDs in the background in the backlight, which we can see in graphic 1, this is provided by Sony sort of just to show this is this is a conventional backlight with blue LEDs. It uses red, green and blue LEDs in basically each LED or has a red, green and blue sub LED in it, I guess you could say. So each LED is really full color and and controllable to produce just about any any full color. The next graphic shows the basic structure of a current QLED tv. There's a blue mini LED backlight, a quantum dot enhancement film which has red and green quantum dots in it when combined with blue makes white. And what you end up with is a low resolution black and white version of the image. That light then passes through color filters in the LCD layer to form the full color image. This has been around for a few years and it's a really good technology. It works great Now. Graphic four shows the new RGB LED structure. The backlight has red, green and blue LEDs, mini LEDs, really, which form a full color image, though again at a lower resolution in the backlight. This light then passes through an LCD layer with red, green and blue filters to form a much higher resolution final image. So it has several advantages. It has greatly increased brightness. Hisense showed a prototype with 10,000 nits of brightness. Now no home content is mastered with 10,000 nits. The most they go up to is 4,000 nits, so you got a lot of headroom there. But it also offers a lot less blooming around images, bright images on a dark background. It also has a wider color gamut. Hisense claims 97% of BT 2020 and a larger color volume which we can see here. The color volume of W OLED is relatively small. QD OLED is quite a bit larger. Mini LED LCD TV is larger and RGB is the largest yet that has the largest color volume, which means colors remain saturated over a greater range of brightness levels. So that's a pretty big advantage. It also has a better color spectrum which we can see here. The gray line is a typical color spectrum for a mini LED tv, a conventional one. And you can see it's very similar in the blue and the green, although it's a bit wider in the green, but it's quite a bit shorter in the red, but with an RGB LED backlight. That's the colored line you see here. And it's a narrower green and a much taller and narrower red in the spectrum, which gives you a lot of advantages. Greater color volume, greater color gamut, and those are all really good things.

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[Scott Wilkinson]

A few journalists to its Tokyo headquarters. Sadly I was not included in that trip. But oh well. And all were quite amazed at the picture quality. All the reports I read were really really glowing. According to Ryan Juaniata at Wired, the prototype had richer and more saturated colors than the Bravia 9, which Sony put the prototype next to, and even the Bravia 8 OLED. And it was clearly brighter than the Bravia 9, which is the probably one of the brightest consumer TVs you can buy today. He was also impressed with the off axis performance, which surprises me because LCD has this basic problem with off axis performance. But apparently the Sony prototype was performed very well in that regard. But he did say the black levels were not as good as OLED, which in is typically the case for LCD based TVs. Now Sony claims that it can reproduce 99% of the DCI P3 color gamut, which is what's used in commercial Cinema and in T4K Ultra HD TVs these days, and 90% of BT 2020, which is the sort of ultimate color gamut. The prototypes still use color filters like conventional QLED or other forms of LCD TVs along with Sony's XR color booster and other technologies. Now the Hisense 116 inch UX Trichroma RGB TV using this technology is set for release in 2025. Samsung didn't disclose much about its technology at CES. Sony expects to have RGB LED TVs on the market in 2026. Now could this technology give OLED some real competition? It could at first. It's likely to be very expensive, very expensive, maybe more than oled, which is already more expensive than any type of LCD tv. I will reserve judgment on off axis performance until I actually get to see one for myself. I'm skeptical because LCD TVs that's an Achilles heel for all TVs based on LCD technology. Can it possibly be as good as oled? We'll see. On the other hand, it'll certainly be much, much brighter than OLED and with greater color volume than even a QD oled. So it's a very interesting technology and I wanted to share it with you as a sort of a preview of things to come. Not a day of not a dull moment in the TV industry, that's for sure. So hope you enjoyed that. Now if you have a question for me, please send it along to htgwit TV and I'll answer as many as I can right here on the show. And as you undoubtedly know by now, all of TWIT's shows are available on YouTube for free but with ads. If you want to go ad free, join the club. Go to TWiT TV ClubTWiT and sign up today to get all of Twitt's shows, including Home Theater Geeks ad free. Until next time, Geek out.

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