Multi-Primary Color Display Emerges as Next-Gen Color Reproduction Technology

ksec 56 points 51 comments July 17, 2026
en.ubiresearchnet.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (11 comments)

noelwelsh

Can anyone explain how this works? Humans have 3 (sometimes 4) cones, so I thought that going beyond 3 primaries wouldn't increase the perceivable gamut. Update: thanks for all the great explanations!

khalic

Preventing selection is quite the useless and user antagonistic pattern...

mhb

Interesting. Though maybe not so surprising that "multi-primary color display technology ... was presented as a key direction for the next-generation display industry" at the “Multi Primary Color Display Ecosystem Conference”.

HelloUsername

So where does this stand in 'backlit' or 'self emmission' panels? "TV Displays Explained at the Fundamental Level" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhFwPAfwdLo

zehaeva

Everything old is new again. Back in the 2010s Sharp tried to release a TV with an extra yellow colored subpixel. Commercially, it failed spectacularly.

RetroTechie

If you're using 4 of them versus 3, wouldn't this require 1/3 more subpixels to achieve the same display resolution in pixels? Or -using same # of subpixels per cm^2- would perceived display quality be similar due to better color representation?

doctorpangloss

> reduce harmful blue light enough studies and randomized control trials have been conducted, it is conclusively shown that blue light emitted from household devices does not interact meaningfully with sleep. metareview CRD420251034611 "non-significant reduction in sleep onset latency" means blue light has been conclusively observed to not delay sleep - it doesn't mean that blue light has not yet been observed to delay sleep, we instead know conclusively that it does not. even better, a registered trial one: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT01855126 - RCT where shining a bunch of blue light on old people's eyeballs didn't help them stay awake longer (going to bed too early is actually a more common clinical issue than staying up too late). well if it can't keep people awake, it doesn't keep them awake. it's a great interview question though. "does blue light from screens cause sleep delay?" it doesn't. why do so many people think it does? why suffer with a piss colored screen?

kurthr

This is really being driven by tandem OLED with blue phosphorescent (not fluorescent which is the current commercial design) layers, most likely from Universal Display Corp. The blue phosphorescent OLEDs have (note red/green are already) longer lifetime and and efficiency, but they aren't the deep blue you need for 3 primary displays. Samsung and LG which both demoed ultra-wide color gamut/volume displays at SID 2026, but also CSOT/TCL. This allows even greater than BT.2020 coverage (APEX pixel is 131%!) or trade off for lifetime with higher brightness/efficiency. The original 4 color LCDs (like RGBY/RGBW) was driven by a long ago need for brightness and resolution with fewer subpixels (see Samsung's Pentile RGBG arrangement). This both solves a different problem and the technology is being driven by a different development (and marketing). https://en.ubiresearchnet.com/sid-2026-bt2020-oled-display-t...

ksec

Submitting this because I never thought I would see 130% BT.2020 in such short period of time. We went from not using BT.2020 because the number is low, to near 100%, and now potentially 130% all within the span of 5 - 10 years.

robocat

> RGBC C is Cyan (~+½G+½B)

danhite

At least one human has functional tetrachromacy (ie 4 cones of retinal perception not 3) ... The dimensionality of color vision in carriers of anomalous trichromacy (2010) https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2191517 So I suppose we could look forward to genetic enhancement in order to perceive better display technologies

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