AUO shows off 16,000:1 contrast ratio AMVA displays

3000:1 for mobile devices

Jun 9, 2010 by

CONTRAST RATIO FOR displays is one of the most over hyped features these days. Most manufacturers use what is known as dynamic contrast ratio which is anything but an accurate figure of the actual contrast ratio of your display. However, AU Optronics was showing off some interesting high contrast displays at Display Taiwan earlier today that could be set to change the market.

A typical LCD panel today in a desktop PC screen has a contrast ratio of somewhere between 2000-3000:1. Many manufacturers are touting numbers of 80,000-100,000:1. This isn’t strictly a false number as what dynamic contrast ratio does, is that it lowers the light from the backlight to make the picture appear to have more contrast. It’s not a good way of increasing the contrast ratio though, but things might be set to change.

AUO’s new AMVA5 panel has a static contrast ratio of 16,000:1, that’s between five to nine times better than the best panels on the market today. The only problem is that AUO appears to be targeting TVs and TVs only with this new technology. AMVA stands for Advanced MVA and the 5 is for fifth generation. If you know your panel technology, then you’ll know that MVA panels are in general far more expensive than TN panels usually found in consumer LCD screens.

We have to apologize about the reflections in the pictures, but it wasn’t easy to get a good picture of both screens due to how they were mounted. But you can clearly see that the AMVA5 display has much better black levels, but also that the there’s much higher contrast between the blacks and colours. We would really like to see this technology in desktop PC and notebook displays in the future, but sadly this doesn’t seem very likely.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom, as AUO is developing AMVA displays for mobile applications. These displays might only have a contrast ratio of 3000:1, but this is still some four to five times better than most displays on mobile devices. The demo panel was a 6.5-inch unit with 800×480 resolution and it looked great on the show floor, although the picture doesn’t make it look as good as the AMVA5 display.S|A

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Lars-Göran Nilsson