Sony announces radical new RGB LED TV technology

Sony has announced a new high density RGB LED backlight technology that could have far reaching implications for Mini LED TV, and TV screen sizes in general.

The Japanese giant has developed a new display system which incorporates an independent drive RGB LED with a high-density LED backlight, able to individually control Red, Green and Blue primary colours.

The technology is said to be particularly suitable for super- large screens, a market that OLED is largely unable to explore because of the high cost of mass-producing producing large OLED panels.

The nascent technology allows each RGB colour to emit light independently, resulting in exceptional colour purity, courtesy of a very wide colour gamut. The display system works with proprietary advanced backlight control technology, able to maximise the panel's characteristics.

We’re promised greater subtleties of colour and black representation, as well as the gradation of light, therefore better reflecting the creator’s original intent - a key pillar of Sony’s screen proposition. Sony says the new RGB LED technology will cover over 99 per cent of the DCI-P3 colour space, and approximately 90 per cent of the ITU-R BT.2020 standard.

Sony has long supported creators' activities for years through professional monitors used for colour grading in video production and BRAVIA reference monitors. The company says this new innovation derives from its expertise serving these areas.

This system is scheduled to begin mass production in 2025, so expect to see it making its debut in TVs from 2026.

While there’s no news yet of product specifics, Sony has made no secret of the fact that it regards Mini LED, rather than OLED, as its flagship display technology. It would therefore make sense for the new tech to debut in the eventual successor to its Bravia 9 Mini LED model; this makes the prospect of an RGB LED Bravia 10 particularly mouthwatering.

Sony is working with MediaTek to develop the control processor, and has partnered with ROHM Co and Sanan Optoelectronics to develop the LED drive IC.

Sony actually developed the world's first LCD television with a full-array RGB LED backlight back in 2004. Since then, the company has continuously worked to improve the precision of backlight control.

Not only does an independent drive RGB LED, with proprietary backlight control, optimise the panel's wide colour gamut performance, the system also features a function that dynamically allocates optimal power to each RGB channel based on the specific scene.

This is a different approach to the traditional aim of boosting specular highlights. Instead Sony says it can adjust luminance ‘in harmony with colour gradation’. The result is that even single-tone scenes, for example a green field or blue sky, are rendered with bright, vivid detail.

The system is said to achieve a peak HDR brightness of over 4000 nits (cd/m²), which mirrors Sony’s professional monitors.

As the display system processes signals at a high speed and with a high bitrate of 96 bits, it not only delivers deep blacks and brilliant whites, it can also render intermediate colours. Scenes with moderate brightness or colour saturation have long been a challenge for OLED panels. High bit-rate signal processing is also said to deliver a wider viewing angle, thanks to precise gradation control.

Sony says that by individually controlling the brightness of the densely packed RGB LEDs, it can render bright areas without white clipping or black crushing. The display system is equipped with approximately twice the processing power and pixel correction technology of conventional local dimming processing.