HP Introduces World’s First Affordable Color-critical Display

[etrigan63]

The HP DreamColor Display features a new liquid crystal display (LCD) that provides a range of more than 1 billion colors in a 30-bit, LED-backlit display. The display is now shipping worldwide for a U.S. list price of $3,499.(1)

Designed for professionals for whom accurate color management is essential and consumers who seek to use only the best in technology innovations, the HP DreamColor display achieves more than 64 times the colors available on mainstream LCDs. Reds, blues and greens are visibly deeper, blacks are four times darker and whites are adjustable.

The DreamColor display is designed to match the requirements of professional industry standards and includes one-button access to seven pre-sets covering all the important color space standards. The display also includes a night vision interface for darkroom working conditions.

The new HP DreamColor display includes the HP DreamColor engine software, which manages the display to deliver reliable, accurate, easy color, every time, and the DreamColor calibration kit for precision calibration.

The HP DreamColor LP2480xz is the first display to be introduced under the HP DreamColor Technology initiative, a two-year technology collaboration between HP and DreamWorks Animation that aims to deliver accurate color that remains consistent from application to application, device to device, and medium to medium. HP introduced the first printers built on the DreamColor engine in March 2007.

 

[DougDolde]

And I suppose you wrote that ad?

 

[TRSmith]

I would really like to see one of those in person. My monitor is great for now, but LED technology is likely to be part of the next one that replaces it. NEC and Eizo can't be far behind with their own versions.

 

[etrigan63]

And I suppose you wrote that ad?

No, but I get the press releases directly from HP and I have requested a pair for testing.

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

Affordable? :ROTFL:

 

[dfarkas]

Is it hardware calibrated like Eizo monitors? If not you are still limited to the bit depth and precision of your video card/OS?

Let us know how your test goes Carlos. Should be interesting to see. If you need an Eizo to compare it to, let me know.

David

 

[etrigan63]

I am attaching the PDF that describes the monitor and has the technical details.

 

[etrigan63]

Affordable? :ROTFL:

This is list price. Since when do you pay list for anything other than Leica? Eizos can get pretty pricey as well...

 

[etrigan63]

Update: Just got confirmation from HP that these monitors are Mac compatible.

 

[PeterA]

I bought an Eizo - the mac displays are junk by comparison sadly I have three.. LOL

 

[etrigan63]

Eizo is a great monitor, but they need some competition. Hopefully this will give them some.

 

[etrigan63]

Is it hardware calibrated like Eizo monitors? If not you are still limited to the bit depth and precision of your video card/OS?

Let us know how your test goes Carlos. Should be interesting to see. If you need an Eizo to compare it to, let me know.

David

There is a calibrator option for according to the PDF. The backlight is not a white light but red, green, & blue LEDs that can be white balance adjusted. Pretty slick. HP is keen to have me do a head-to-head with an Eizo.

 

[woodyspedden]

And I suppose you wrote that ad?

Doug

You seem like a really bright guy who could contribute greatly to these fora (ums?). But you constantly are in a position of "ripping" whatever seems to be going on rather than contributing to people learning from your experiences. I would suggest that your motives need to be challenged! Guy has made a great point of saying that the goal of these threads is to teach.....to project our experiences so that others may shorten the path to as good as it gets with regards to images from capture to final prints.

Why continue on this negative approach? You have the ability to capture great images from what I have seen. Help the rest of us who are not there yet. Stop the yelling and start the teaching. I would love to learn from you because I would become a better photographer for sure.

Come on Doug, help the helpless........stop the whining and get on with what is ultimately important about this mess.

All the best my friend.......you have a lot to share...get on with it

Best

Woody

 

[BJNY]

Doug is correct.
Link(s) and italicized text is proper etiquette as I've done here:

 

[etrigan63]

BJNY, as I had published this stuff on my own sites, and I have been frowned at by some folks here as a flagrant self-promoter, I was keeping a low profile. Doug may have been correct, but he did not offer any suggestions as you did. Instead of asking "Where did you hear that? Can you post a link?" he sounded condescending, and not just to me. Maybe I should've started with something like "This from an HP press release..." and link back to the release on my site, but Doug posted and locked me out of editing my original post.

Thank you for the suggestions. Perhaps Guy & Jack should add that to the posting rules.

 

[BJNY]

Do you own a CG210 or CG211 to compare it against?

 

[aero]

Oh wild - this is a very sweet little monitor right here. According to my local HP rep, I can also use my education discount to bring the price down some. I'd be VERY interested to see if anyone does a review (even cursory) on this monitor.

Now, if only there were printers capable of this level of output, my world would be complete

Best,
-D

 

[etrigan63]

David Farkas of Dale Photo & Digital will make a comparable Eizo LCD monitor available to me for comparison. Between David and myself I think we can form a fairly credible opinion about the product.

 

[TRSmith]

There's a mini-review of the new monitor here: http://www.macobserver.com/review/2008/06/17.1.shtml

As often happens with leading-edge tech, other components (video cards, applications) will need to catch up a little to fully take advantage of what the monitor can do. But it does seem to represent the next level of color accuracy for pros that need it.

I for one, will be following this over the next year or so and look forward to etrigan63's complete review.

 

[etrigan63]

The only way to get 30-bit color to the monitor is to use the DisplayPort (which can support up to 16-bits per channel). The current crop of FireGL cards can handle this but not Quadro. Unfortunately, as of this writing there are no FireGL cards available for the Mac (this may change). The new ATI HD3870 Mac card can handle the 30-bit colorspace but it maps it down to 24-bits when it pumps it out of the DVI port.