The best picture you can get

The best picture

Sony is showing for the first time their new 4K OLED professional monitor screens. Up to now you'd  have one or the other - not least because either technology is still eye-wateringly expensive, so it's hard even to imagine what the cost of a screen incorporating both attributes might be

What do they look like? Well, with footage taken in "true" 4K with a Sony F65, you'd expect it to look good. You'd expect extreme sharpness and a wide, vivid colour gamut. And of course it did look fantastic.

Sony wisely chose to display two very different types of material. One was footage of what looked like a carnival in Rio, filmed with an F65, and the other was a more subtle drama film made with the F55.

Gorgeous

Both displays looked gorgeous. And very analytical. The Brazil footage looked over saturated until you realised that those were real colours. And at times, the camera lost focus, but that was only because it was at night, there was a shallow depth of field, and people were moving fast. The fact that the 4K picture was so sharp meant that you could notice this stuff. That's what you want with a professional monitor.

The F55-filmed drama looked lovely. A scene where a woman was sat on a sofa lit though the window by a grey sky looked unbelievably subtle and real.

Kudos

Kudos to Sony for showing us just how good a video picture can look.

Less kudos to the people who were photographing the screens with their cellphones.

Here's Sony's press release in full:

Las Vegas, April 7, 2013: Sony today announced that it has developed a new 4K OLED monitor for professional use. As part of its continuous efforts to advance display technologies for the broadcasting and content creation fields, Sony has developed 4K OLED monitors that can reproduce video signals with the highest degree of accuracy that professionals require. To demonstrate this R&D achievement, Sony will be showcasing a 30-inch prototype (4096 x 2160) and a 56-inch (3840 x 2160) prototype at the 2013 NAB Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. To accelerate 4K production in the industry, Sony’s internally-developed 30-inch 4K OLED monitor is expected to be launched in the market in the year of 2014.

Sony also announced the latest “A” Series of its renowned TRIMASTER EL™ OLED professional monitors that have set global standards for critical picture evaluation. Sony’s OLED displays provide a superior visual experience to CRT and LCD monitors, reproducing accurate blacks/colours and featuring exceptional dynamic range and outstanding motion response that enables the most accurate picture evaluation in the industry. Sony's TRIMASTER EL monitors have been well received by critical users who demand professional-quality picture performance, resulting in total global shipments of over 20,000 units to date*.      

The new “A” Series models feature significantly improved viewing angles, reducing the colour shift by half when compared with their predecessor models. In fact, the new “A” Series models offer industry-leading wide viewing angles in the whole professional flat panel market. This enables group monitoring by video engineers or colourists which improves overall productivity and workflow efficiency.

The new “A” Series include the BVM-E250A and BVM-E170A master monitors for high-end cinema and broadcast applications, the BVM-F250A and BVM-F170A master monitors optimized for TV productions and broadcasting, plus the versatile PVM-2541A and PVM-1741A picture monitors which suit a wide range of monitoring applications.

“We’ve learnt from 38 years of professional monitor development, continually re-formulating our display line-up to meet the high expectations of customers from the broadcast and content creation fields,” said Daniel Dubreuil, Senior Product Specialist, Sony Europe. “In developing the new ‘A’ Series, we’ve once again introduced innovative and advanced display technology that brings the highest quality picture performance in the market.”