May 27th 2025
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
00:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I talk about a new LED TV technology, so stay tuned.
00:10 - Leo (Announcement)
Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is TWIT.
00:30 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
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 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 one. 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 blue sub-LED in it. I guess you could say so. Each LED is really full color and controllable to produce just about any full color.
02:08
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 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.
02:42
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 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 whiter 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 a greater color volume, greater color gamut, and those are all really good things.
05:09
Now Sony flew 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 Waniata 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 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 probably one of the brightest consumer TVs you can buy today. He was also impressed with the off-axis performance the off-axis performance, which surprises me, because LCD has this basic problem with off-axis performance. But apparently the Sony prototype performed very well in that regard. But he did say the black levels were not as good as OLED, which is typically the case for LCD-based TVs. 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 4K Ultra HD TVs these days, and 90% of BT.2020, which is the sort of ultimate color gamut of BT 2020, which is the sort of ultimate color gamut. The prototype 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.
07:20
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.
08:17
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 htg at twittv 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 twittv, slash club, twit and sign up today to get all of TWiT's shows, including Home Theater Geeks, ad free.
Until next time time geek out
Share: Copied! Home Theater Geeks #484
May 29 2025 - RGB LED
A Colorful New LCD Backlight Tech!… All Transcripts posts Contact Advertise CC License Privacy Policy Ad Choices TOS Store Twitter Facebook Instgram YouTube Yes, like every site on the Internet, this site uses cookies. So now you know. Learn more Hide Home Schedule Subscribe Club TWiT About Club TWiT FAQ Access Account Members-Only Podcasts Update Payment Method Connect to Discord TWiT Blog Recent Posts Advertise Sponsors Store People About What is TWiT.tv Tickets Developer Program and API Tip jar Partners Contact Us