SpectraCal On Home Theater Geeks 82

CTO Derek Smith talks on Home Theater Geeks #82 about video calibration and the future of home video. Click and listen!

The Chase For Visual Quality

It’s well known that color, brightness and contrast are the primary drivers of digital video quality. These factors are quite often even more important than resolution. Recent color improvements in televisions and video projectors, the desire to enjoy entertainment media on smaller, lower quality devices, and the newer digital color standards have created a unique need for an enhanced video color processing technology using visual perception models to improve the quality of the video experience outside the cinema theater.

To understand visual perception modeling, consider a bed of flowers on a bright sunny day. The flowers look very colorful. As the sun goes down, the flowers appear less colorful and have lower contrast. Did the flowers lose color? No, the physics of flower light absorption and reflection still apply, and the flowers have the same purity of color. What makes them appear less colorful? The answer is the adaption of human vision. As the brightness decreases, the perception of colorfulness and contrast decreases. The human eye adapts. Perceived brightness, colorfulness and contrast are all interrelated. If an image is brighter it looks more colorful. If it is more colorful it looks higher contrast.

A second key element of visual perception modeling is the perception of memory colors such as sky blue and flesh tones. Human vision is highly sensitive to changes in these memory colors, with viewer reaction being quite negative if they don’t look accurate and real. The perception of these memory colors is not only adaptive, but the three dimensional volume of memory colors is difficult to define in any standard color space across all brightness levels. White, brown, red, olive and yellow skin tones at different brightness levels all cover a fairly large three dimensional color volume and can only be well defined mathematically in a perceptually adaptive color space. This makes it more challenging to process flesh tones and other memory colors differently than other colors in an image’s gamut.

An additional factor to consider in driving optimal visual quality is the viewing environment. It is well known that perceptual contrast is reduced if the human eye is adapted to a surround that is brighter or darker than the viewed image. Contrast enhancement has been added to motion picture film viewed in dark cinema theaters since motion film’s  inception. This is one reason for the frequent observation, “Movies just look better in theaters than at home.” Including the contrast reduction caused by ambient light adding to the emitted or reflected video image, one can see that contrast enhancement is a prime requirement to fully optimize viewing quality in various viewing environments.

Can a standard display produce a highly accurate rendition of movie images so that a home audience has a professional cinematic experience, despite the effects of their own viewing environment? Is there a way to optimize image perception to effectively take you from any viewing environment into the optimized cinema theater viewing environment? The answer is “Yes.” 

To be continued...

 Spoilers @ 1-877-886-5112

SpectraCal @ CEDIA EXPO 2011 Videos

Check out these videos of what SpectraCal was showing off at CEDIA EXPO 2011.

SpectraCal Introduces The eeColor Image Processor


SpectraCal and basICColor Announces Highly Capable Colorimeter: DISCUS


Nanosys Quantum Dot LCD TV @ SpectraCal Booth


CEDIA 2011: SpectraCal Talks About Video Calibration


SpectraCal Explains How Its CalMAN Software is Integrated with DVDO Processors


If you close your eyes, it's almost like you were there :)

SpectraCal @ CEDIA EXPO 2011!

CEDIA EXPO (September 7-10) is the leading tradeshow in the residential electronic systems industry and SpectraCal will be there to showcase the latest and greatest in display calibration and digital signage technology. Here’s a sneak peak at what we’ll be showing at CEDIA!

The basICColor DISCUS is a high-end colorimeter for the accurate measurement of color monitors, flat-panel displays, and projectors.  It can be used in contact or non-contact mode.  In non-contact mode, it features a laser pointer for aiming. SpectraCal enhances each DISCUS individually in its Seattle calibration lab, adding support for additional device types.  Each DISCUS ships with a Certificate of Performance verifying its accuracy on each device type. Read the full press release and check out the product page!

 

The eeColor™ Image Processor takes the home theater experience to a new level. eeColor processing now complements accurate display calibration with enhanced color rendering and room light compensation. The eeColor Processor incorporates chromatic adaptation and visual perception models with full, three-dimensional color processing for the first time in video systems. Read the full press release and check out the product page!

 

The CalMAN Expert with SpectraCal C6 & DVDO iScan Duo Package is a powerful video calibration bundle crafted to provide you with the results you are looking for at an extraordinary price.  With the new dedicated Duo Workflow, CalMAN provides unprecedented system communication and optimization of your video display hardware. Full package details here.

Digital signage is the latest in interactive marketing and communication and SpectraCal provides you with the full solution that includes the advance SpinetiX HMP devices. The SpinetiX HMP100/HMP200 is a compact digital signage player that simplifies publishing information, audio and dynamic content to your display through internal Fusion software with 720p/1080P output across the network, 4GB/8GB of internal memory plus USB for external storage, and a lifetime warranty. Learn more about digital signage here.

 

Questions? Call +1-877-886-5112

 
Many exciting SpectraCal announcements and demonstrations will be shown at CEDIA 2011.Come visit us at booth #4961 if you're attending or stay tuned to our Facebook for all the latest CEDIA details!

SpectraCal and Entertainment Experience Announce Next Generation Image Processor

SpectraCal, Inc. and Entertainment Experience announced the eeColor image processor, providing unprecedented control over video images.

Leveraging over 35 years of research in visual color science by experts from Kodak, universities, and Hollywood film production, eeColor produces “the brightest and most colorful moving images that I have seen,” says Mark Fairchild, Director of the PhD Color Science Program at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Jason Turk, chief engineer at AVScience says eeColor is “like nothing else on the market.”  eeColor adds “a vibrancy to the colors that I have never seen to date,” Turk says. Derek Smith, SpectraCal’s founder and Chief Technology Officer, explains that this is partly because eeColor for the first time allows full use of displays’ ever-expanding capabilities. “Manufacturers have been hard at work expanding the color capacity of their displays,” Smith says, “But to achieve image fidelity, we’ve had to turn all the expanded capacity off.  With eeColor, you can now make full use of the expanded color gamut current displays allow, while still maintaining accurate flesh tones,” Smith explains.  eeColor utilizes proprietary technology based on newly understood physics of adaptive vision. Learn more about the eeColor image processor with the full press release.