Sony Electronics has announced it has developed a new display system incorporating an independent drive RGB LED with a high-density LED backlight that can individually control three primary colors — R (red), G (green), and B (blue) [RGB] — and that is suitable for large screens. This panel allows each RGB color to emit light independently, resulting in high color purity and the ability to reproduce images with a vibrant, wide color gamut. Additionally, the display system is equipped with Sony’s proprietary advanced backlight control technology, designed to maximize the panel’s characteristics. This backlight control technology enables faithful reproduction of delicate hues and subtle gradations of light across every corner of the display, even on large screens. In cinematic works such as films, the ability to convey narrative expression relies significantly on the subtleties of color and black representation, as well as the gradation of light. This system enhances these elements to provide image quality that faithfully reflects the creator’s intent and is suitable for both film production and home viewing.
The display system has been developed leveraging unique experiences and technical expertise gained from Sony’s historical support of creators’ activities through professional monitors used for color grading in video production and BRAVIA utilized as reference monitors. This system is to begin mass production in 2025, aiming to expand its integration into consumer televisions and displays for content creation.
Key Features of the Newly Developed Display System
Sony Electronics developed the world’s first LCD television with a full-array RGB LED backlight in 2004. Since then, Sony has continuously worked to improve the precision of backlight control, gaining a deep understanding of the characteristics of LED elements. In the development of this display system, Sony’s unique backlight control technology contributes to maximizing the panel’s performance.
- Wide Color Gamut Performance Enabled by an Independent Drive RGB LED: Independent color emission ensures high color purity, covering over 99% of the DCI-P3color space and approximately 90% of the ITU-R BT.2020
- Expanded Color Volume for More Natural Image Representation: By combining an independent drive RGB LED with proprietary backlight control technology, Sony has fully optimized the panel’s wide color gamut performance across the entire screen — delivering delicate, nuanced hues even on large displays. In addition, the system features a function that dynamically allocates optimal power to each RGB channel based on the specific scene. Unlike conventional high-brightness TVs that concentrate light on bright elements such as stars or the moon in night scenes to boost peak brightness, Sony’s approach adjusts luminance in harmony with color gradation. This ensures that even single-tone scenes — like a deep blue sky or vibrant red autumn foliage — are rendered with bright, vivid detail. Furthermore, the system can achieve peak brightness levels of over 4000 cd/m², a benchmark already realized in Sony’s professional monitors, resulting in the highest color volume in the history of Sony’s display devices.
- Wide Dynamic Range and Precise Gradation Representation: The display system processes signal at a high speed and with high precision at a high bitrate of 96 bits. This not only allows the simultaneous expression of deep blacks and brilliant whites, but also enables the delicate representation of differences in brightness and darkness in scenes with many intermediate colors. This new system can achieve what is challenging for existing OLED panels: the expression of colors with moderate brightness and saturation. Moreover, high bit-rate signal processing helps deliver a wide viewing angle by precise gradation control, minimizing color shift and brightness variation when content is viewed at a slant on a large screen.
- Accurate Color Reproduction by a Dedicated Control Processor: By individually controlling the brightness of the densely packed RGB LEDs, it is possible to render bright areas vividly without white clipping and to delicately depict the nuances of light in dark areas without black crushing. Additionally, the display system is equipped with approximately twice the processing power and pixel correction technology compared to conventional local dimming processing, allowing the reproduction of subtle color differences and accurate colors without color shifts.
Sony is participating in joint development of control processors with MediaTek Inc., its long-term strategic partner, and a company with a proven track record in developing and supplying SoCs (Pentonic) for smart TVs. Sony is also working on the development of the LED drive IC together with ROHM Co., Ltd., and the LED together with Sanan Optoelectronics Co., Ltd. These partners support Sony’s direction for next-generation displays.
For more information, visit https://electronics.sony.com/.
