You know that fancy flat-panels can
display more colors than the human eye / mind can even interpret, right? Thanks to our hard-wired limitations, a certain facet of boffins across the way are developing a method that would scale back the amount of colors used in an
OLED screen in order to shave energy usage even further. Johnson Chuang of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia has worked with colleagues in order to conjure up sets of colors that "slash the power consumption of an OLED panel by up to 40 percent, with minimal effect on how people perceive an image." In theory, at least, this breakthrough could lead to longer battery life in cellphones, PMPs and all manners of portable devices. As Chuang puts it: "Say you're running low on battery and you want to use Google maps to get home; switching to an energy-aware color set could make your battery last longer." Don't pretend
that doesn't interest you.
posted Jul 8th 2009 9:23AM
Would be interesting to see some side-by-side screenshots of regular & low power images. I wonder how minimal the effect really is.
Plus, you know that the missing colours would be the *exact* ones you enjoyed the most...but as long as they promise to keep mauve and puce, i'm in.
@j_g_puff:
You can't forget Chartreuse
From this picture the effect isn't as minimal as they're making it sound (IMO). The color difference is pretty clear to me...
@ j_g_puff & Michael Witt
Russet FTW
"From this picture the effect isn't as minimal as they're making it sound (IMO). The color difference is pretty clear to me..."
It might be pretty obvious from a very clearly defined side-by-side comparison, but when the entire display is in reduced color mode it might not be nearly so noticeable.
I really like the idea of having the ability to specify which display mode you get. Though I have to say it - the iPhone 4GS^3 will only have the low-color display because Apple will decide it's better that way. On the flip side, the ZunePhone 2 will have both, but it will only switch by screaming the word DEVELOPERS at the phone several times.
@michael witt
have you ever had Chartreuse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartreuse_(liqueur)
its weaponized Listerine
o, you meant the color, carry on
wouldnt side by side pictures be useless if you were viewing on an lcd?
Could be handy for battery operated devices but maybe not TV's
Yes to the TVs, Carbon Footpint man. Gotta watch that stuff.
Oh, lol. Sigh.
How would this affect us (red/green) color blind people? Would it make it more challenging? Oh well, a small price I'm willing to pay for a better battery life.
WOuld you know that you are color blind if nobody told you shades of grey aren't just shades of grey?
@banana2011: You're such an idiot.
Do you have any clue as to what red/green color blindness is?
Wikipedia:
Color blindness, or Colour blindness, a color vision deficiency, is the inability to perceive differences between some of the colors that others can distinguish.
Do you see "grey" (or "gray", whichever you prefer) in there?
That is what I was wondering. Heck I can see so few "colors" (shades) I would to trade that off for better battery life.
People complain about the color spectrum of some screens, and I am like....."Looks good to me" :)
And BTW, while I do miss the old B&W Atari days, we can see color. Games like Super Puzzle Fighter (which I love and hate) can be difficult, because the yellow and green gems look very similar (at least for me). Bejeweled is another, because two of the gems have a similar color AND shape..... (the circle/octogon yellow/green ones) I wish they would change the shape to be more distinct, but I just have bad eyes.
I suppose the people who are color blind and running out of battery power won't be able to see the power-saving color mode and follow their Google map directions. Then they will soon get more and more lost. When they ask for help they will be shunned by the full-spectrum seeing population who fears something different and driven out further from home.
If the colorblind manages not to freeze or starve that first night, there is a chance, however slight, that he/she might find a clan of roaming colorblind homeless to band with. More likely they will eventually just be eaten by a lion. If you think seeing a lion hiding in the grass is hard enough using all the light in the rainbow, then you've never been colorblind.
Sad really. I once set up a rally for the colorblind in my town. I designed these beautiful red and green posters. Just stunning. Yet all that work and not a single colorblind person came. Naturally I held a grudge.
Brian!, I applaud your creativity.
Even with half the colors of an LCD, it would be a much more dynamic image.
Our eyes can only perceive so much, and our current media formats only have a limited range of color anyways. It would be one thing if you were watching uncompressed 1080p video with 4:4:4 color, but with bluray, let alone cable or streaming video, there would be no difference at all, other than the number of colors listed on the box would be lower.
Another thought.
If we dumb down all the colors then we will never evolve as a species. If however we continue to display all the colors in the spectrum, perhaps in a few generations we will actually start to perceive them.
Not how evolution works.
It is if we all agree to persecute the people who are unable to see in high fidelity.
That's impossible according my bible-belt science class.
i don't know about that, stupidiot. i'm sure comcast/time-warner/directv would have us believe that tv-watching is key to our survival.
Why'd you guys use county map of the southeast US?
My thoughts exactly... I was like, do Mississippians see less color than the rest of us?
Southeast.... perceptions of color.... get it?
To show that it will make gerrymandering easier.
Looks like it's from ColorBrewer.
(Geography nerd, here)
http://www.personal.psu.edu/cab38/ColorBrewer/ColorBrewer.html
Why is the picture for this article of counties in the South East?
I dont' understand the pic at all, either. It absolutely is the South East Counties in the US, but why?
Maybe it's how we're supposed to be voting?
it's the part of the country that has the biggest problem with color
We've got Heavy Storm Warnings, Tornado Watches, T-Storm Warnings, and T-Storm watches.
I'm totally cool with this for my mobile phone / PMP, but you leave my colors alone on my TV!!!!
Seriously, maybe you have a hard time being able to articulate what is lacking with these reduced-color displays, but I think many people would sense that there was SOMETHING missing, and report having a less enjoyable experience. I can't really explain to my friends why my classical music is encoded losslessly on my computer, but if someone converted the files to 128kbps MP3, I would notice that something was lacking... maybe not on their shitty computer speakers, but on my canalphones or my Paradigms, you bet your sweet ass.
Guy: "My battery is running low!"
Other guy: "You idiot! It's because you are using firetruck red instead of magenta!"
Actually the color gamut produced by most displays is only a portion of the colors we can see, especially the greens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut
There is no way in hell you can limit the color gamut and not see it. You can work around the limitations, and balance the picture within the reduced gamut available to your, but if you view the reduced color version next to a full color version, you'll be able to tell immediately which one is better.
Still, "Greens for Shitty Screens" has a certain ring to it.
I personally can't see the difference between 16M and 65K colors so i have no problem with less colors if it saves power.
Even 256 colors would be fine in a real emergency, i had that on my first PC for years and didn't think anything was wrong until i got a new one.
Yes indeed, let's revolve the world around you, let's call all the industry leaders worldwide and have them adapt to your poor needs.
What a great idea. Do we really need 24 bit colour when the human eye can't distinguish between 16.7 million different shades?
this doesn't interest me
Your comment doesn't interest me.
One would think that most people would be able to differentiate all the colours on a Google map even now?
I think a lot of people are getting this wrong.
This isn't about Blu-ray, it isn't about video. It isn't about any image which is already rendered and thus has a fixed color set. It's about if you are creating images in a UI, you can select colors that use less power. First you can do it be selecting colors which don't turn on at least one of the (RGB) sub-pixels. So, for example, instead of using brown, you use orange. Second you can do it by using red and green more than blue (blue takes the most electricity).
It won't look like the original image, so you can't use it for pictures for example, but for things like google maps that display information with colors you can design an image using this restricted color set that conveys the same data that another, more power-hungry image would.
The best way to save power is to use darker colors as much as possible, black doesn't turn on any sub-pixels at all. And companies already know all this stuff, this is why the UI background on the Sony music player, the Zune HD and such all use black as the backdrop.
Make it a 160x120px Black/White display and you're up for months of battery usage!
Sweet!
White uses the most power of any color you could display.
Make it black and green and you'll do a lot better.
Remove the display altogether and make it say the song titles in a computer voice.. Oh wait.
my phone doesnt even have regular OLED in it yet, let alone power saving color limited OLED
Wow engadget, you interpreted the article completely incorrectly. We CAN perceive all the colors that come out of our "fancy flat-panels." What is not needed is the full gamut of colors to perceive differences in brightness and such. Read and re-read.
Make that 'what they claim is not needed' rather than 'what is not needed'