Quantum dot TVs beat RGB LED TVs, says the company that makes QDs for TVs

量子点电视优于 RGB LED 电视，这是来自量子点制造商的说法

At the Los Angeles Convention Center, two 85-inch TVs sat side by side inside the Nanosys meeting room at Display Week — a yearly business-to-business convention focusing on the technology that goes into displays of all types. One TV was a mini-LED panel with super quantum dots, and the other was an RGB LED — this year’s hottest TV trend. Both TVs were showing the same content at the same time to highlight the differences between the two technologies — or more specifically, to show the potential failings of RGB LED backlights when compared to super quantum dot (SQD), which uses blue LEDs for the backlight. I should probably mention that Nanosys made the quantum dots in the first TV.

在洛杉矶会议中心举行的 Display Week（一年一度专注于各类显示技术的 B2B 展会）上，Nanosys 的会议室里并排摆放着两台 85 英寸电视。其中一台是采用超级量子点（Super Quantum Dots）的 Mini-LED 面板，另一台则是今年最热门的电视技术趋势——RGB LED 电视。两台电视同时播放相同的内容，旨在突出两种技术之间的差异，或者更具体地说，是为了展示 RGB LED 背光在与使用蓝色 LED 背光的超级量子点（SQD）技术相比时可能存在的缺陷。我应该提一下，第一台电视中的量子点正是由 Nanosys 制造的。

As a quick refresher, RGB LED TVs use red, green, and blue LEDs grouped into zones to create a colored backlight based on the image displayed on screen. Theoretically, this gives the TV more vibrant and saturated colors than mini-LED TVs like the X11L with blue backlights, without needing to rely solely on the quantum dots. The primary potential issue is that the colored light provided by the backlight will bleed into adjacent pixels or zones that differ in color, resulting in what’s called color crosstalk. Practically, this could cause the red of a bright shirt or hat to cause the skin of the wearer to have a reddish hue. And that’s exactly what this demo showed.

简单回顾一下，RGB LED 电视使用红、绿、蓝 LED 分组形成区域，根据屏幕显示的图像产生彩色背光。从理论上讲，这使得电视比像 X11L 这样使用蓝色背光的 Mini-LED 电视拥有更鲜艳、更饱和的色彩，且无需完全依赖量子点。其主要潜在问题在于，背光提供的彩色光会溢出到颜色不同的相邻像素或区域，导致所谓的“色彩串扰”（color crosstalk）。在实际应用中，这可能导致鲜艳衬衫或帽子的红色让穿着者的皮肤呈现出红润色调。而这正是此次演示所展示的内容。

During the entire demonstration, the same video feed went to both TVs. One slide showed three rows: two rows of boxes with the primary and secondary colors — blue, green, red, cyan, magenta, and yellow — and the third with a thin white cross on a black background under each colored box. The top row of boxes would then alternate between a solid box and one with a white cross inside it. On the RGB LED TV, as the white cross appeared in the top row, it was easy to see the color of the area around the cross get a bit lighter and less saturated. The color crosstalk didn’t just happen within the top row of boxes; the box color from the middle row also visibly bled into the bottom row of crosses.

在整个演示过程中，两台电视接收的是相同的视频信号。其中一张幻灯片显示了三行内容：前两行是包含原色和间色（蓝、绿、红、青、品红和黄）的方块，第三行是在每个彩色方块下方带有黑色背景的细白十字。顶部的方块行会在纯色方块和带有白十字的方块之间交替变化。在 RGB LED 电视上，当白十字出现在顶行时，可以明显看到十字周围区域的颜色变得更浅、饱和度更低。色彩串扰不仅发生在顶行方块内，中间行的方块颜色也明显溢出到了底行的十字区域。

But unless you’re a measurement nerd like me, you don’t watch solid blocks of color on your TV for fun. The effect is also present with skin tones — something that, as humans, is easily noticed. Just as the color of the blocks bleed into the white cross, so does a colored background into skin tone; still images of a woman’s face with a colored background caused her skin tone to shift toward the background color. To make sure my eye wasn’t causing the color bleed, as opposed to the TV, I used a scope to focus just a portion of the woman’s face, blocking out the rest from my view. I could still tell which background color was displayed by the change in hue of her skin.

除非你像我一样是个测量发烧友，否则你不会为了娱乐而盯着电视上的纯色块看。这种效应在肤色表现上也同样存在，而作为人类，我们对此非常敏感。正如色块颜色会溢出到白十字一样，彩色背景也会溢出到肤色上；在带有彩色背景的女性面部静态图像中，她的肤色会向背景颜色偏移。为了确保不是我的眼睛产生了色彩溢出感，我使用示波器只聚焦于女性面部的一部分，遮挡住其余部分。即便如此，我依然能通过她肤色色调的变化判断出背景显示的颜色。

The SQD TV did not exhibit any color crosstalk. It also had better contrast, which comes down to the number of dimming zones. The X11L is advertised as having up to 20,000 dimming zones, although according to Rtings, the 85-inch model has 14,400 — still an impressive number. The RGB LED TV used in this comparison has, I was told, around 8,000 dimming zones. One reason the number is lower is because each dimming zone on an RGB TV, at a minimum, needs to have three LEDs — a red, a green, and a blue — and those take up space. But when the backlight is composed of only blue LEDs, a single LED can be a dimming zone, giving much finer control.

SQD 电视没有表现出任何色彩串扰。它的对比度也更好，这归功于调光分区的数量。X11L 宣传拥有多达 20,000 个调光分区，尽管根据 Rtings 的数据，85 英寸型号实际为 14,400 个——这依然是一个令人印象深刻的数字。据我所知，此次对比中使用的 RGB LED 电视拥有约 8,000 个调光分区。分区数量较少的一个原因是，RGB 电视的每个调光分区至少需要三个 LED（红、绿、蓝），这会占用空间。但当背光仅由蓝色 LED 组成时，单个 LED 就可以作为一个调光分区，从而实现更精细的控制。