Siggraph

I didn’t get what was new and useful about HP’s DreamColor technology when it debuted for monitors at NAB 2008. (DreamColor was introduced in 2007, but aimed initially at color printing solutions.) There seemed to be a lot of noise being made for better color rendition, but what was exciting or new about that?

I think I’m starting to get it. Attending a talk by HP and a group of DreamWorks artists and technicians–their partners in developing the technology–the differences in the crisp colors and black blacks of the new 24-inch HP DreamColor LP2480zx display and a standard LCD at its side were remarkable.

The new display is described as “true 30-bit”, which means it can choose from a range of over 1 billion colors to display. The result? No banding, and rendering of colors subtle enough to best reflect what the artists want to see on the big screen.

That’s key. DreamWorks’ techies had been stockpiling CRTs for the past few years so that its artists could have devices to render color correctly. Sure, you can buy LCDs that give a good accounting of colors, but they can cost around $25,000. The HP runs about $3300.

That also means that DreamWorks or any other company can afford, for the most part, for each artist to have a ‘hero’ display on their desktop.

DreamWorks technicians also reported that they were used to spending at least 1 hour per week per monitor calibrating them (CRTs tend to drift), a necessary chore if the artist is to deliver the exact shades necessary for a scene to reproduce correctly when shown in a theater (not to mention so that the work of hundreds of artists also matches one to the other). The new technology, however, is so stable that calibrating can be done once or twice a year, max.

HP also claims that the blackness of its new monitor’s blacks—critical in establishing correct gamma—is some four times better than that achieved by Sony’s top LCD reference monitor.

At the show, HP expanded its DreamColor technology offering with the introduction of the HP EliteBook 8730w Mobile Workstation with DreamColor display –a potent way to take this color accuracy on the road. The 8730w features a massive 17-inch diagonal DreamColor screen, which offers millions of colors, a lot more than the typical 260,000 available on traditional notebook PCs, according to the company. The notebook employs an Intel quad-core processor, 8GB of memory, and NVIDIA’s next gen Quadro FX cards with up to 1 GB dedicated video memory.

Off axis viewing is also tops, much better than most anything you’ll find, so those peering around your shoulders will be seeing the best possible color too.