You can go on and on about how great the flatscreen TV in your home theatre is, but I guarantee it won’t hold a candle to the image, brightness and colour quality of Dolby’s $US40,000 reference monitor.
It’s just 42 inches in size, is limited to a 1080P hi-def resolution, (no 2K or 4K here) and doesn’t have anywhere near the wide viewing angle of the best consumer TVs.
But it’s capable of displaying the full dynamic range that today’s digital cinema cameras can capture, including the highlights and dark areas of an image that most displays usually clip. And with support for something called LUTS, or look-up tables, it can even display most of the dynamic range captured by film, for accurate post-processing.
And to make sure the 68kg PRM-4200 is always perfectly calibrated, it includes an over-the-top remote that lets users individually adjust the red, blue and green LED triplets — 1500 in total — that make up its backlight. They’re features that are useless to the average consumer, but vital to professionals who need a reliable baseline reference for color-correction and quality control. And to them, an LCD display that promises that is worth the small fortune that Dolby is asking. [Dolby via Dvice]