More on the UHDA specification announcement after the jump:
Industry insiders have told HD Guru that the specification-setting process has dragged on through much of the year, in part, because of disagreements over HDR brightness ranges between LED LCD TV manufacturers and LG and OLED component suppliers, which are championing the needs of OLED TV technology.
Due to inherent technology differences – OLED panels are remissive and generate their own light while LCD TVs are transmissive and require LED back or edge lighting to create a picture — 4K Ultra HD LED LCD TVs and OLED TVs display HDR using different degrees of brightness and darkness.
LCD TVs are capable of higher brightness levels (more than 1,000 nits in some cases) than most OLED display devices, while OLED TVs are capable of achieving “absolute black levels,” because they can completely shutoff light at the pixel level. The best LED TVs can do is locally dim zones of LED backlights to near black but not the absolute blackness generated in OLED displays.
Therefore, the two technologies come at HDR from different directions. OLED starts at black and works up 14 to 15 camera f-stops of light (steps of increasing brightness) in the HDR spectrum. LED TVs start at maximum brightness they can generate and work down the 15 stops to the lowest level of black they can achieve.
One of the issues UHDA members have faced is how to arrive at a standard that will satisfy both approaches. Stay tuned for the solution.