My goodness, the new TVs are spinning fast, right? With a strict annual product cycle and sites like IFA and CES 2020 offering plenty of opportunities for the biggest TV brands to showcase their wares, new sets are constantly being introduced, often with incremental updates between generations. At first glance, 2020 may seem like one of those years: OLED is now firmly established in the premium product lines, while most of the new ranges appear to be a polish of what came before. But there's one new TV tech for 2020 that isn't screaming enough, and that's the new Game of Thrones-inspired brightness sensors used by Panasonic and LG TVs. Here's why it's worth paying attention to.
Dolby Vision IQ 101
It all started with Dolby Vision IQ: an algorithm designed to improve the TV's calibration when viewing the dynamic Dolby Vision HDR format. What does it really mean? This means that the metadata provided for Dolby Vision content, which allows you to implement the complexities of HDR video as efficiently and accurately as possible for each shot or scene in a film or documentary, can now further enhance the image of the screen in response to the brightness of your living room. Speaking to TechRadar, Dolby told us that these image corrections go much further than simply increasing the brightness of the TV panel to compensate.
![Muchos programas de televisión ahora se producen en Dolby Vision: el formato dinámico HDR preferido por Netflix.]()
Many TV shows are now produced in Dolby Vision: Netflix's preferred dynamic HDR format. (Image credit: TechRadar) "We didn't adjust the brightness or contrast," the Dolby representative said. "It would be a comprehensive framework and therefore would not provide a consistent experience. “The Dolby Vision IQ ambient light compensation algorithm is applied with 12-bit precision and models the contrast sensitivity of the human visual system at varying degrees of adaptation of light to reproduce the look of the content creator in a reference viewing environment." High-end TVs tend to look better in darker environments, where the backlight of an LCD TV, or the self-emitting pixels of OLED TVs, are unaffected by external light sources, whether it's natural daylight or ceiling lamp and table lamps. It's very difficult for TV manufacturers to design for the practicalities of people's homes, but adding physical light sensors to TV sets goes a long way to correct this.
Cascading economy
Of course, the impact of such a feature will depend on how it's implemented, but since only a large portion of video is currently formatted in Dolby Vision, Dolby Vision IQ might at first appear inaccessible, or even irrelevant to most televisions. the watchers there. Dolby had nothing more to tell us about it, although a conversation with Panasonic shed some more light on the subject. We spoke to Paul Darch, general manager of the television group at Panasonic Europe, who told us about using the light sensor for content beyond Dolby Vision.
![El sensor de luz de Panasonic está presente en todos sus televisores OLED 2020.]()
Panasonic's light sensor is present in all of its 2020 OLED TVs. (Image credit: TechRadar) Light sensors, at least in Panasonic TVs, can also calibrate picture settings for SDR, HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG, you know, everything else, thanks to the new Filmmaker mode, which has been designed to limit excessive image processing that distorts the original intent of content creators. This is made possible by Panasonic's Intelligent Detection feature, which extends the capabilities of light sensors to affect non-Dolby Vision content. Like Dolby Vision IQ, Smart Sensing could probably be more clearly named for connecting to light sensors, though it's not currently available on LG TVs that support Dolby Vision IQ. "The impetus for optimizing viewing in bright environments comes from consumer feedback that HDR content can appear dark when there is low ambient light in the room," said Darch. "This is also true for OLED and LCD TVs," he added. We have a slight feeling that the OLED dimmer output on LCD/QLED TVs may be part of the reason the functionality was developed, especially since it's currently only available for certain OLED sets.
A house game
Darch specifically cites from the infamous Game of Thrones episode The Long Night, which received a slew of complaints for dark scenes that were incredibly difficult for many viewers to make out, with series director Fabien Wagner blaming viewers' ability to adjusting their TVs, as well as (a bit more fairly) the compression the episode underwent for HBO to air and stream, which seems to have reduced the detail of its dark decor. < p lang="en" dir="ltr">I'm sure it looked great in a state of the art editing bay with the full HDR digital workflow or whatever. But when its output was crunched to the crap for networking and streaming, most viewers were left with a dark, imperceptible mess. #GameofThronesApril 30, 2019 We also can't talk about it without saying that your average TV clearly isn't as capable of picking out dark detail as high-end OLED screens. That's why this light-sensing feature could add to both budget and mid-range packages that probably need more help. Darch told us that these light sensors could "potentially" end up in LCD screens in the future, which means we may very well see this feature make its way to more mid-range sets, where it can affect a much larger number of viewers. We haven't. We've been able to find out how much these light sensors cost, but we're guessing that's not a huge amount compared to the full cost of an OLED or LCD TV, and we hope to see them show up on the latter. in the 2021 range next year. We're told that Panasonic is at least thinking about "more sensitive sensor technology or advanced software", so hopefully there's more to report on this. We've also tried to get feedback from Dolby on the possibility of a Dolby Atmos IQ feature that calibrates surround sound in response to ambient noise in a room, but the company wouldn't be drawn to it. We can dream, huh?