The mass exodus from city centres towards the seaside, bush or campsites over the December break creates ideal moments to capture and treasure. But with the mad rush into the new year, sometimes the fabulous holiday memories dissolve under stress and busyness. A recent study showed that reminiscing can reduce stress levels significantly. Dr Mauricio Delgardo and Megan Speer, who published the study in the Natural Human Behaviour journal are quoted as saying, “’When uncontrolled, psychological stress can drive us far from a desirable state, (but) enhancing positive feelings by reminiscing about the past may be one way to bring us back.”

All those wonderful videos you took on holiday, whether they’re exquisite sunsets, intricate surfboard stunts or something outrageously silly that would get 1,000 likes on YouTube, deserve the right TV to play them back; especially if you want to get the most stress-busting benefits out of your reminiscing. For ultra-enhanced memories, a QLED TV will ensure your memories are re-played in sensational colour and detail. The QLED TVs intelligent colour volume evaluates the way colours look in the real world when different levels of light are applied to them – meaning that no matter what time of day or what the light conditions are, your holiday memories remain vibrantly real. QLED TVs can express a vast range or colour – from primary colours to achromatic colours, vividly and accurately.

“Utilising new Quantum Dot metals, QLED TVs offer outstanding colour volume, pinpoint colour accuracy, improved brightness and the deepest blacks on an active display. These attributes equate to an unmatched picture quality,” says Mike van Lier, Director Consumer Electronics, Samsung Electronics Southern Africa.

The range of QLED TVs available in South Africa have launched a new era of television picture performance and will ensure you can relive your holiday and reduce stress levels well into the future with astounding colour brilliance. Your beautiful memories will likely motivate you to make more, which means not only will your stress levels be reduced from reliving your holidays, you’ll have additional activities to watch and reminisce about.

Samsung Electronics’ 2017 QLED TV recently received verification from world-class testing and certification association, Verband Deutscher Elektrotechniker (VDE), for its ability to produce ‘100 percent colour volume.’ The designation, a first for any global TV manufacturer, illustrates how colour volume is quickly becoming an effective way to measure the precision of colours.

Defined as a three-dimensional representation that illustrates the colour reproduction capacity of a display at all of its luminance levels, colour volume is also an important standard for ensuring that content is displayed in the way the producer intended. But what makes it different than other colour standards? Let’s take a closer look at this new measurement of colour.

From SDR to HDR: Measuring Colours Accurately

Many television colour standards, which were defined in the days of CRT TVs, are stuck at an outdated 100 nits. As a result, displays were not able to express colours accurately when reproducing videos and images according to these standards.

With more recent displays, beginning with the world’s first commercialized HDR TV launched by Samsung in 2015, luminance level ranges have increased, allowing whites and blacks to be expressed more realistically. Colour ranges, too, have expanded, resulting in images that are more true to life. We call this new, broader range High Dynamic Range (HDR), while the preceding range is known as Standard Dynamic Range (SDR).

In HDR, whites and blacks are more true-to-life.

Up until now, most manufacturers and calibrators have specified and measured the range of colours that a display can reproduce in terms of colour gamut. Specifically, the American film industry has utilized the DCI-P3 colour gamut for digital movie projection.

In the world of SDR, illustrating a display’s colour gamut on a 2D colour space proved satisfactory, as calibrated displays behaved in a similar manner. Peak luminance was 100 nits and colours were generally well saturated at one luminance level, typically 75 percent of the display’s peak luminance.

But in the HDR era, things are different. Peak luminance, for example, is generally five to ten times higher, and in the case of Samsung’s QLED TVs, 15 to 20 times higher. These varying luminance levels have a big effect on how colours are displayed. As the image exceeds the display’s peak luminance, for instance, colours can be displayed differently from what they were intended to be, sometimes resulting in a wash-out effect.

Even with the same content, colours can be expressed differently on different displays, depending on their luminance range.

So, while 2D colour spaces were sufficient to indicate colour gamut in the SDR era, things are different in the world of HDR, where luminance levels differ greatly. Therefore, a new colour standard needed to be established to ensure that the HDR content that’s being produced, broadcast and displayed is correct and retains the content creator’s original intentions.

The Importance of Colour Volume

To accommodate the variations of different displays, luminance was integrated as a third dimension into the traditional 2D colour gamut diagram to create colour volume. This 3D measurement illustrates how a display reproduces colours at all of the luminance levels of its luminance range.

Unlike the conventional two-dimensional CIE 1931 color space diagram (left), three-dimensional color volume takes luminance into account, and is thus a better measure of a display’s colour rendering capacity.

Put simply, the higher the colour volume, the better display can express a vast range of vivid, accurate colours. Samsung’s QLED TVs’ ‘100 percent colour volume’ verification means that all colours of the DCI-P3 colour space can be expressed regardless of differing levels of brightness, ensuring that HDR images can be viewed in the way the content producer intended.

With 100 percent colour volume, Samsung’s QLED TVs display colors in true to life form.

Bringing together the features that define HDR for consumers such as higher contrast, greater peak luminance levels and the ability to render a wide colour gamut over a large range of luminance levels, colour volume will no doubt continue to become a growing area of interest in the display industry. The future of TV is here, and it is colourful!

If you enjoy browsing the newest TVs when visiting your local big box store or are among the millions who subscribe to streaming movie and TV services, it’s very likely you’ve come across the term 4K HDR by now.

As definitions, 4K refers to a screen resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 pixels, or four times the level of full high definition (Full HD) at 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. HDR, which stands for high dynamic range, is a recently introduced technology that dramatically enhances contrast ratio (or how bright and dark a TV can get) as well as a TV’s ability to express many more brilliant colours to display content perfectly true-to-the-source. In fact, with the significant difference that HDR provides, many experts have taken to calling it the ‘future of TV’.

While both 4K and HDR are advancements in their own rights, combined together, 4K HDR content takes picture quality to a whole new level and is simply jaw dropping in terms of the utter realism, brilliant colour, and immersive experience it provides. With no hyperbole intended, 4K HDR delivers a TV viewing experience which simply hasn’t been seen before.

Given the expectations for how 4K HDR will re-shape the industry, major content services like Amazon, Netflix, YouTube and others are already providing content in 4K HDR, with the number of titles expanding daily. New 4K HDR TVs and HDR media players are also being introduced to the market at a rapid pace.

Choosing the Right 4K HDR TV

In line with this trend, if you’re currently on the market for a new TV, it makes sense to consider one that is 4K HDR enabled. However, with people still learning about this new technology, how do you choose the ideal 4K HDR TV that will display 4K HDR content in the way it deserves?

The easiest way will be to look for the ULTRA HD PREMIUM logo which is issued by the UHD Alliance for products and services that meet or exceed strict performance levels for 4K resolution, HDR, and wide colour spectrum.

To provide, however, further understanding of a TV able to do justice to 4K HDR content, it’ll be helpful to look at the example of Samsung’s new QLED TV. Introduced at this year’s CES, and quickly capturing industry attention, the new QLED TV provides insights into three key criteria when it comes to choosing the best 4K HDR TV for 4K HDR content:

• What is the TV’s colour volume?
• Does the TV utilize advanced HDR (at least 1000nit image source)?
• How is the TV’s brightness and contrast?

Let’s explore each of these criteria more deeply.

Key Criteria #1: Colour Volume

To display 4K HDR content at its best, it’ll be important to become familiar with the concept of colour volume, and to look for a TV that offers 100% colour volume.

While Samsung Newsroom has covered colour volume in-depth in a previous post, this exacting standard of colour expression measures two elements of the TV with three-dimensional space – the colour gamut and the brightness level. The colour gamut looks at the amount of colours that can be displayed physically. The peak brightness represents the display’s maximum brightness level. The larger the colour gamut and the higher the brightness, the bigger the colour volume of the TV.

For its part, Samsung’s new QLED TV combines quantum dot light and RGB colour for 100 percent colour volume expression—the first TV to be validated as such by the world-class testing and certification association, Verband Deutscher Elektrotechniker (VDE).

QLED is able to achieve 100% colour volume and precise colours through the unique combination of quantum dot light and a pure RGB colour filter

What this means for 4K HDR content is that Samsung QLED will display the content with absolutely precise colour accuracy, as realistic as it gets, and exactly as the director intended

Key Criteria #2: Advanced HDR Utilization

While HDR, as mentioned earlier, is a relatively recent advancement, it’s important to understand that there are already variations to this new technology in particular involving the nit level (or visible-light intensity) a particular HDR-type is able to capture.

When it comes to 4K HDR content, the key will be to keep in mind the requirement of 1000nit. In short, a TV that cannot capture a 1000nit image source will not be able to depict content, particularly 4K HDR, completely true-to-the-source.

Different from other sets being introduced to the market, Samsung took the initiative to integrate HDR capabilities able to express a peak brightness of up to 1500-2000nit (surpassing the 1000nit requirement) into its QLED TV. Samsung QLED TV’s advanced HDR capability ensures it is able to depict 4K HDR content with perfect true-to-the-source accuracy, just as the directors intended.

Advanced HDR technology expresses every detail just as the director intended

Key Criteria #3: Brightness and Contrast

The final criteria to consider in choosing the ideal 4K HDR TV is the TV’s brightness and contrast, specifically the peak levels of brightness the TV is able to achieve. In addition to deep blacks, many experts consider a TV’s brightness levels to be key to outstanding picture quality given the significant difference of varying brightness levels to the human eye. Brightness is also critical given the different lighting conditions of many home and other environments, and will be a decisive factor in ensuring that 4K HDR content is getting the best expression possible.

Samsung QLED TV’s brilliant light source, based on quantum dot, also helps it produce exceptional brightness and contrast in any setting ensuring 4K HDR content will get the play it deserves in diverse home and other environments.

As the year continues, it’s no doubt you’ll be hearing much more about 4K HDR – from new content and titles to TV and media hardware. The dawning of the 4K HDR era promises to be an exciting one, and we hope you stay tuned as Samsung continues to introduce further innovations in this area.