The Offset Podcast - The Offset Podcast EP030: Discussing Monitors Part 1

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

For our 30th episode we're discussing that topic we always seem to revisit - monitoring!  While we have some opinions on the state of reference and consumer monitors in 2025 we thought it'd be fun to celebrate our 30th episode with some good friends who also happen to be experts in their part of the monitoring ecosystem.  In Part 1 of a two-part series, we're joined by Flander Scientific CEO Bram Desmet, Nate McFarlin from Dolby, and David Abrams from Portrait Displays/Avical.We'll discuss their areas of expertise with each of them a little bit - monitor manufacturing, display testing and validation, and calibration.  Specific topics explored in this episode include:Staying on top of monitoring technologiesChoosing display technologies for a monitor product lineDetermining what features make it into monitor softwareAddressing different needs of different users e.g. DITs vs ColoristsHow staying at the forefront of color science helps deliver the most accurate monitors possibleThe role that an R&D company like Dolby plays in the monitor ecosystemHow monitor usability is just as important as performanceThe complexity of monitor display technologies and how they can complicate monitor evaluationSometimes monitor evaluation brings with it things manufacturers don’t want to hearConsumer monitors can be considerably harder to evaluate than professional monitorsWhat does Dolby Certification really mean for consumer TVsWhen will we hit a point where HDR is standard & SDR is looked at in a similar way to HD or 4:3 Professional vs Consumer displays when it comes to calibration accuracy out of the boxCalibration is not a replacement for understanding & proper setup/use of a monitorExploring how calibration has become both easier and harderHow accurate is accurate enough and is the cost of reference calibration gear worth itNoticeable differences & degrees of accuracy with calibrationDrift and the frequency of recalibration In part 2 we explore some monitoring topics provided by our listeners and ones that Joey and Robbie have been eager to discuss.

Hey there, and welcome back to another installment of the Offset Podcast. And today, we're taking a look at the state of monitors in 2025. Stay tuned. This podcast is sponsored by Flanders Scientific, leaders in color accurate display solutions for professional video. Whether you're a colorist, an editor, a DIT, or a broadcast engineer, Flanders Scientific has a professional display solution to meet your needs. Learn more at flanderscientific.com.

Hey, everybody. you welcome back to another installment of the offset podcast. I am Robbie Carmen and with me as always is Joey Deanna. Joey, how you doing, buddy? Good, how are you? I am good, man. Spring is in the air. I'm wearing pink.

I'm feeling like it's monitor season. You know, every spring I sort of start to feel like it's monitor season for a couple reasons. One, it's kind of like trade show season, you know, so like everybody's going to big trade shows and talking about monitors. And it just seems like, you know, post the holidays and, you know, the start of a new year, Everybody's like, hey, what's my big purchase going to be this year? And it's probably a reference monitor, right?

That is something that colorists and DITs and stuff are always thinking about. And so I wanted to spend this episode talking a little bit about, I don't know, the state of affairs of monitors. I think we went through a period for a couple of years where things were really kind of like flat, kind of boring. It was clearly that like everybody was doing kind of stopgap things. And to a certain degree, I think we're probably still in that zone. But I wanted to talk about monitors, but here's the thing, man, is that you and I can flap all we want about monitors and SDI connections and contrast ratios. But the fact is, is that we have some very, very smart friends who are experts in this field and know quite a bit more than we do about this. So today we thought we'd have a little bit of a special episode.

This is going to be part one of a two-part series kind of exploring the state of affairs on monitors. And we are lucky to be joined by these three. gentlemen. Hi guys, how are you? Let me introduce everybody. First of all, we have Bram Desmond from FSI. Bram is, actually you and Nate, who I'll introduce in a second, have the honor of being our only returned guests. That's because we've only had two guests before, both of you. So, congratulations for being a return guest. We have Bram Desmond from FSI, who is the CEO and general manager down there. He is a guru of all things. Display manufacturing, process, technology, of displays that kind of stuff.

We have Nate McFarlane from Dolby. Hey Nate, how are you, man? Nate is a engineer, validator, Jack of all trades over at Dolby. At Dolby Labs, he explores, you know, if the proof is in the pudding with monitors, he does a lot of training and, you know, part of the certification process for Dolby,

for those of you who want to become Dolby Vision and Dolby Outman Certified, that's kind of Nate's, you know, area of expertise. And he is my go-to person for any time I have a question about, you know, hey, is this a good purchase to buy? What do you think? Is the truth here? And so he'll have some good perspectives about monitors from Dolby's perspective and validation and that kind of stuff.

And then we also have David Abrams. David is a, how am I going to say this? I think David is like the guru among gurus when it comes to calibration. If you talk to any pretty much any post-production or facility or any colorist, they will, know David's name and his calibration company, Ava Cal. And David also is now at portrait displays. David came out with an awesome application. What was that, David?

Probably about three or four years ago you released your app. Patterns. Yeah, Patterns. Patterns. Test generator. Yeah. So Patterns is a very cool application to be able to interface and do calibration on computer monitors displays.

It's a very cool app. We'll let him talk about it a little bit more in detail in just a bit. But David's expertise is obviously with anything calibration. He's probably, I mean, I'm guessing, David, at this point, you probably calibrated 100,000 displays or something ridiculous. It's probably a lot, right? It's about, you know, actually I actually had to look this up at some point. It's about 25,000.

Oh, my gosh. So if anybody's going to have the experience and who's sort of seen it and done it and seen all the gotchas is David. So, guys, we can't thank you enough for jumping on. We're really excited to sort of talk about so this stuff. And so I want to spend just kind of a couple minutes with each one of you. And then, like I said, in part two of this series, we'll come back and kind of explore some of the hot button topics, things that are on our minds that you guys are experts in. So, Bram, let's start with you, man.

I put you on the spot. You know, I think when I think of your expertise, I often think about all of the, I don't know, probably at this point, thousands of hours. that you've spent in conference rooms at show, you know, at big trade shows, listening to monitor presentations. And I'm not talking about like the marketing people. I'm talking about like the Uber engineer guys who are talking about like sub pixels and quantum this and quantum that, right? I guess my first question for you is, you know, as a monitor, you know, provider maker,

what goes into picking technologies and panels and stuff? And kind of how do you stay on top of that? Because it seems like it's an ever-shifting, ever-developing kind of landscape. Yeah, well, first, thanks for having me on and really appreciate what you guys are doing. And yeah, it's always a challenge. So what we do is we have good contacts at various semiconductor manufacturers, so the big companies that make the panels themselves. So we have ongoing relationships with those.

So a lot of that is just relationships that have been built over the last 20 years and having discussions about what they're working on, their future roadmaps. There's other, like any industry, there's also trade shows and organizations that kind of cater to our very niche kind of needs. So one that we try to go to, for example, or I personally go to is SID's Display Week. At SID's Display Week, and that event essentially brings together those semiconductor manufacturers, pro-manufacturers. It's kind of a level removed from this type of stuff, I think, that colorist, editors, VITs are interested in because it's not complete products. But it is a good opportunity to meet with those companies, talk to them about what they're doing.

Obviously, a lot of this happens overseas. So this is one of the few kind of events that happens more state side. And then just a lot of industry trade stuff, press releases. We try to keep on top of what everybody is making and how technologies are. are evolving. You oftentimes get really excited about things on paper and they get really disappointed when you evaluate them. So a lot of evaluation, a lot of rejection of technologies. So yeah, it's a kind of ongoing, ever-evolving process. And it's, yeah, it's a kind of a full-time job. Yeah, I was going to say, do you have, as a display manufacturer and being more in the know than

than we are, do you struggle with having to wade through a lot of the marketing part of this as well? Like, you know, like, because it just seems to me that like, you know, one of the challenges for, you know, our audience as colorists, editors, etc., is like, you know, a company will come out and be like, hey, this is the ultra-quantum, you know, do-hickie? And it sounds a revolutionary, right? But like, do you have to wade through that same level? Or when you're evaluating displays, is it more of like, no, we get rid of that? We're just dealing with the engineering part of it.

So I think we've learned enough over, you know, I've been in this industry about 20 years now, and we've learned enough about evaluating specs, specifications even just on paper, and we can quickly wade through a lot of the marketing BS and know what we can expect out of display technology based on things like the report of specifications or reported spec for power distribution. Sometimes we can get access to that information. But there's a lot of marketing hype to wait through. It's not so much. The marketing hype is easy for us to kind of suss out what's real.

What's, you know, again, hype. Yeah, sure. The harder thing for me and the thing that frustrates me more is misuse of terminology or giving things names that are intentionally very confusing. You mean LED TVs? LED TVs, you know, calling things, you know, very similarly named things like tandem primary, this and that and versus a regular tandem OLED. I got to say, I was really disappointed when I bought a quantum dot television that I, like,

didn't get entangled and like all of a sudden just start seeing. I don't know. That's bad joke, but you get the idea. It's true. So some of those naming conventions and stuff can be confusing. And yeah, so that's always a challenge. But I think we've gotten pretty good at sussing those things out. And ultimately, what it comes down to is buy samples, test the product, see if we think

there's a market for it. And then also try to do our due diligence on, you know, staying power of that technology, because that's really been the biggest frustration over my last 20 years of doing this is that you get really excited about something. And what we've seen time and again is that unfortunately a lot of times the best performing technologies are so niche, so expensive that the providers of those technologies, well, there's not really a market here. We're going to stop. And so we've seen those instances. Sometimes it's a thing where you have three, four or five years of notice, and then sometimes it's just overnight that company's gone. So we've gotten a lot more careful about that.

And luckily, a lot of the mass market stuff that's produced in high quantities and tends to have staying power has gotten a lot better. So there's less of that worry now than there used to be. But that's been an ongoing frustration over the year. Yeah, I would imagine that's a challenging kind of thing. Like, how do you, like, you're having to read the tea leaves a little bit about like, okay, this is what's coming. this is what's potentially going to have the same power.

Like in the broader sense, would you say that your work, your R&D work is a couple years or a couple months? Like what's the time period ahead that you generally are for when like a guy like me is buying a monitor, right? Is that a couple years? There's a couple months. Like is a vary? Yeah, it does vary. So when we do like the back, the back end hardware that drives the panels, when we do a change there, that is something that typically will be, you know, in the, development for a couple of years before anybody knows or sees anything about it.

In terms of nothing new panel technologies, though, as long as we have a platform that supports the type of connection going to that panel, whether that's, you know, EDP or LVDS or whatever it may be at UHD, 4K, HB resolutions, whatever it is, as long as we have the backend hardware that can fit into that, it's actually, you'd be surprised how quickly we can get a prototype ready. So we can get a neutral panel and have something up and running in like three, four weeks. So it can go quickly. Then there's always the debugging and the fine tuning.

And we're constantly iterating, trying to improve, you know, find problems, catch problems, improve on things. But it is a, you know, it's a constant evolution. But yeah, it varies a bit. But there are, you know, there are platforms that have been in the works for years that haven't seen the light of day yet. But there is a lot of that happening behind. Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, I often, I think it's easy to think of like a company like FSI or other monitor companies as like hardware companies.

But like the fascinating thing to me is like, and I don't know if this is 100% accurate. It just seems this way to me is that like you guys are almost more of a software company at times than you are than you are a hardware company, right? Figuring out like functionality. This button is going to do this. This is the feature that this set of group books. Can you speak to just in general like how. the process or the challenge of kind of like designing features and figuring out like, okay, this is going to be something that we think this group of, you know,

our customers are going to want or need. Like what goes into that thinking and kind of like the development of that? Yeah, so when we have new panels or new backend architecture that's developed, we take the approach of first focusing on color reproduction, color accuracy. And then so displaying video correctly, that means things like, you know, displaying whatever, you know, frame rate you're getting at an even integer frame rate on screen so that you have proper cadence of a video. So we work on the basics first. That's, we start with what most people buy a monitor from us for, and that is color accuracy and accurate display, the content on screen.

Then from there, we have, you know, things that we think a lot of time stuff that customers haven't asked for, but that we think will bring a lot of value to market. We have a lot of our own ideas about those things. We develop those out and we, you know, have those come out as features. But you're right, we are very much a company that focuses on, we're essentially a company that, you know, hardware is part of what we do certainly, but a lot of our time and effort is spent on firmware. A lot of that comes from feedback from customers.

And a lot of times it's just us, you know, we think we know how our displays are going to be used, and then you're oftentimes surprised. So a good kind of, I think the two real world examples of that, when we introduce the XMP series monitors are like, cool, we're going to focus on UHD, progressive, PQ, HLG, that that's what people are going to be using these for then we start and then there's robbie making web videos it's not the name web videos it's just it but it is people like you

who are like you're like hey you know what we deliver uh inordinate amount of interlaced still and we're like oh crap you know because the inside baseball um one of the things that i i ought of the many things that i drive bram crazy with it's the fact that i'm always saying something about interlacing and bram's general response is aren't we over interlacing yet like wasn't we've got a long time ago, yeah. But it is, so those types of things. So we added those as features. So that's a good example of like what I love is that yes, we build a hardware platform to do a certain thing, but that hardware platform tends to be really flexible, right? And we can do a lot with firmware. So when we got a lot of this feedback about, hey, I want to see interlaced on screen like a CRT monitor would show it.

We did that. And I think we're one of the few kind of large format monitors, certainly, certainly UHD resolution monitors that actually can replicate interlaced very much like a reference grade CRT would. So you can see things like field reversals accurately. Now there are a lot of consumer TVs that do a good job of converting interlaced to progressive and making it look really good. But typically those have six, seven frames of processing delay to do that. And ultimately, you're still not seeing it as interlaced on screen. So what we do is we're actually showing it to as interlaced. The other good example was HD. We thought everybody was going to be using these things for UHD and just UHD and 4K and that's it.

A lot of people are like, hey, we need HD and we were doing very, you know, very basic nearest neighbor scaling and it has jaggy edges when you do that. So what is we developed a higher quality by cubic scaling. So now that scaling is a proof. So those are the type of things where it's just customer feedback, right? People saying, hey, you know, these are what we think are highest priority. And then it's, you know, like any company working on software or firmware, it's, you know, priority list, you know, what do we think is going to have the greatest?

impact to the industry, what's going to, you know, selfishly help us sell more displays. Squash and bugs, that's going to be iterating there. And in Post, there are really only a core set of things. There's not that much to tackle. So a lot of, you know, a lot of the preliminary stuff are let's get everything ready for Post. And then we start digging into catering more to those, to those production applications where there are a lot more of these like really niche, you know, requests like, hey, I want to do four, four images into a, monitor. I want to do custom look luts. I want to control it via library. And so we build those things out over time to cater to more and more. I mean, we already operate in a super niche space,

right? And then we cater to niche segments of this already niche space. But that's what makes us different than an off-the-shelf computer monitor or something, right? So we enjoy that. That's part of what we think makes us a little special. So yeah, it's what we spend our time and effort on. Yeah, I mean, in part two, we'll get more into some of your prognostications on like what the industry and the future trends are. But I got one last question before we asked Nate a few ones here as well. Like, one of the things I'm fascinated by is, and this might be unique to you, but it just seems in general that I see this a lot with display companies. Like that intersection of color science and this technology too is also really interesting to me. Like, I think a lot of people who know you or have come to know you or see you at a trade show floor, like, you've become a resource for color science, you know, type questions, right?

And I know you spend a lot of time, you know, studying this stuff and talking to other experts. Like, just briefly, what is that intersection like for you? Like, because, like, you know, obviously color science has a lot of uses, meanings, et cetera. But as a display manufacturer, like, why is that something that, you know, you guys focus on so much? Is it part of that accuracy equation? Is it part of, you know, just answering people's questions? Like, why spend so much time learning something, you know, and being an expert in color science?

Yeah, I mean, you know, people buy our monitors, I think primarily for accurate color reproduction, right? That's kind of the paramount thing. And as I tell, you know, like our sales team, for example, is like, what you're really selling people is confidence, right? So to be confident that the image is correct. So the only way to be confident that the image is correct is to really know the color signs through and through. So you need to know the industry specifications. You need to know how to hear those specifications.

You need to know how to calibrate those specifications. And you need to understand kind of the gotchas and caveats because none of this is straightforward, you know, and especially when you get to more, you know, advanced, if you want to say targets like when you talk about PQ and HLG and REC 2020 and, you know, out of monitor gamut. targets and how you handle that first, you know, because there's, there's multiple ways to handle it. What's the correct way to handle it? And then we also interface a lot with industry standards bodies, you know, so we try to talk to people at 70. We try to talk to people at EBU. We participate in, you know, very nuanced niche events like we did December. We did a metamorism expert stay in the UK. And that sort of stuff is really fascinating to me on a personal level. But it also helps us, you know,

cater to our clients, because our clients have these questions, you know, so, hey, when I'm in rec 2020, why does it do this, or what should it be doing? Hey, when I'm in PQ, you know, what ranges should I be operating in? All these sorts of things, you need to know that stuff. And then again, when it comes down to the color science part of it, you know, the challenges like metamorism, failures, metammerism in terms of display matching, inner observer metamberism, all those sorts of things become really important. You can only understand it if you really understand the underlying color science. So that's why we're obsessed with it and why we spend so much time trying to learn everything we

can about those topics. So now I want to talk to Nate a little bit about his perspective from Dolby as a color scientist and an engineer, because I think Dolby has a color scientist. has a pretty unique place in the industry when it comes to displays, right? They've driven display innovation in the past, making prototypes, making new technologies, basically inventing and introducing us to what I consider to be, you know, the biggest shift in how we encode and display an image since color, which is HDR. And, but at the end of the day, they don't make TVs.

They don't make or sell reference monitors. they make kind of innovative technologies around the imaging space and partner with all these companies like FSI, like the consumer TV manufacturers, to kind of make sure the image is shown in the best kind of possible light. And a big part of that I know is testing a huge array and variety of monitors, right? I've seen pictures. And when we went to Dolby, I've seen like rooms filled with monitors of, you know, everywhere from little ones to huge ones to prototypes to off-the-shelf consumer TVs to whack-a-doodle stuff that you've never even heard of. Why is it so important to test all these monitors and tell us a little bit about what actually

kind of goes into testing all these monitors of different capabilities? You know, how do you kind of bring it all together into? do, okay, I'm going to look at a monitor. This is what I'm going to look for, and this is why I'm going to look for those factors. Yeah, sure. Happy to talk about that. And thank you guys for having me on again. I'm honored to be a returning guest. But yeah, no, I, to Joey's point, I think Dolby has a really cool intersection just as a company. It's one of the reasons why I love working here. It's that we really do sit at this really niche intersection of art and science, which is something that's very, you know, hits home for me. I'm very passionate about, but also very cool to

see how we've influenced the change in ecosystem and also really, really great to always see folks coming to us as a resource or a beacon in the evangelization and education for HDR. So your question about monitors is a great one. Part of the complexity here is that we deal with things on both the creation side and also the playback side, right? So from my point of view, I work typically most frequently on the content creation side of things. So the way I typically will approach any sort of display evaluation is wearing this hat of like, hey, would this display be suitable for creating HDR content that will eventually be mastered in

Dolby Vision and go downstream to a Dolby Vision device? So from a very fundamental level, it's a lot of the same sort of considerations of Brama's just speaking about, right? Things like color accuracy, luminance, performance, black level, stepping out of black, how additive is the display. And that's a lot of kind of the more scientific or numerical objective approach that I would say. But there's also a really big component of usability, right? So as these displays continue to become more accessible, more folks are reaching them and using them.

But that also means that more uneducated folks, right? So people that don't have a background in color science or maybe are getting into editing or post or VFX or things for the first time. So a lot of it's not just, hey, how accurately does this track PQ or what are the primaries looking like? But it's like something as simple as, hey, how easy as it is to like navigate the menu? How easy can you set up picture profiles and do things? And one of my close colleagues at Dolby, Timo Cunkel, and I talk about this all the time. And we say that in general, I'd say that we're getting to a spot where displays are continuously improving, which is really great for HGR accessibility, you know, throughout.

the whole ecosystem, but they're coming with a lot of added complexities. And I'm sure we can talk about this a little more in the next episode as well. But I almost equate it to things like when you shoot a video on your or a picture on your iPhone, right, where it's like it's very hard to manually dial it in and you're kind of just trusting that the software is doing the right things, right? And that's, you know, permeated all the way to displays. And that's why reference displays like the ones that FSI make are so valuable, right? Because there are no, you know, algorithms, tweaking things.

it's literally just like signal in, signal out, and being able to trust that in cell confidence like you guys were talking about early is super, super important. So that's kind of how the testing is done or kind of the framework we typically like to use, but from also just a kind of an ecosystem point of view, we also just like to compare different technologies, see where the industry is heading. You know, it's very important for us to also stay up to date on informing the partners like Brom and FSI and all these other folks of like what our users are asking for because ultimately like Dolby has a vested interest in creating or help folks creating the best HDR content

so that you know when you get to the end user experience you're getting really compelling you know viewing experiences so we're obviously very vested in helping our partners create the best displays as possible as well so and we like to hope that that's valuable so maybe I don't know I like to hope that Bram appreciates my evaluations yeah and that's so that's interesting because I feel like you kind of have to sit between the consumer, the artist, and the manufacturers, right? Because the artists might be asking for one thing, I just want to do everything 100 nits the same way I've been doing it forever because I have one film print lot that I love and why doesn't it always look the same in HDR? Whereas, you know, the consumer

TV manufacturers and less so the professional monitor manufacturers, but to some degree, they want to kind of show off the technology and take it to, oh, you can go to five bajillion nits on this. How great is that? How do you kind of navigate when you're talking to both, you know, manufacturers and artists and other kind of kind of when you're sitting in the middle of all of this, how do you kind of bring it all together and say, okay, here's how I'm going to, you know, get a set of recommendations that will kind of make everybody happy and nobody mad?

It's tough. That's very hard. You'll notice David and Brum both laughing at that one. This is why Nate still has hair because he's a lot younger. Dave and I are both bald now. That's right. No, it's a really good question, honestly. And this is something that we speak to a lot in our trainings is that I think this whole

discussion was a lot easier back a few decades ago when folks were, no matter where you were looking at some flavor of CRT, relatively similar size, right? There's just so many formats and variability now between different display types, whether it's OLED, LCD, dual air, you know, QD OLED. There's so many different flavors of display technology, but then there's also so many form factors, right? I mean, this is something that's really cool to me about Dolby in general

is that we're not just talking about Dolby Cinema or TVs at home now. We're in, you know, iPhones, tablets, laptops, computer monitors. I mean, we have displays into cars that are double. enabled, which is mind-blowing to me. So I think that makes it really tricky as well, right? Because not only are you introducing the variability and the technology, but also the environment, and then you know, you have issues like ambient light, you know, viewing distance, angles, like, you know, you could go down a rabbit hole very quickly with what makes this stuff difficult.

So that's why, like, when I do my evaluations, I love when I get the reference monitors in because I'm like, this is easy. Like these are great. This is very simple, like more cut and dry than some of the other types. But also, you know, there's applications outside of the specs, like I was saying, right? So, you know, a great, you know, TV might not make a good, you know, display to use on set or things like that. There's things like there's so many different applications, whether it's for VFX, you know, first color, even something like a GUI monitor or, you know, monitor and said, like they all require different, you know, physical capabilities and image quality parameters. So long-winded answer to your question is it's really tough.

So that kind of brings me to the general idea of, you know, when you look at a display or especially a consumer TV, you know, you go to the store, you buy one. It's got a little Dolby Vision badge on it. What does that actually mean on the back end? What are you getting as a consumer when you buy a television that has the official Dolby Vision badge and certification on it? Yeah, that's a great question. And again, another comment when we get all the time. So there is a big misconception that Dolby somehow was instrumental in helping create or manufacture these specific displays. That's not the case.

So whenever you go into any sort of retail space that sells TVs or whether it be a desktop monitor or things like that, if you see a Dolby Vision logo on the box, all that means is that that display has the capability to decode and do the display mapping required by a Dolby Vision encoded signal. So if you pull up a Dolby Vision TV and you start up your Netflix, Disney Plus, whatever OTT service that supports vision, and that specific piece of content was mastered in Dolby Vision, and you have the according subscription model or whatever you need, that will play back on Dolby Vision. And it will automatically trigger that displays Dolby Vision mode. So it'll automatically flag it on the signal. The TV will flip into, typically speaking, it's the Dolby Vision mode.

We vision bright mode, as it's called, on most TVs. You can also then change. There are scenes like Dillivision dark, billy vision bright. We have game modes, vivid modes, et cetera, for various different models. So typically speaking, the bright mode is always the default out of the box. And that's just because we're assuming that the average living room is not as well-controlled maybe in lightwise as a grading suite. Yeah.

So, you know, staying in the consumer world for a little bit, how do you feel, you know, in terms of the adoption and accessibility of HDR, both content and monitoring, is these days. Because I think, you know, just a few years ago, HDR was really, really, God, we keep saying everything is niche in this episode, but it kind of was, right? I think, I think, no, I think you're right. I think a few years ago, it seemed, and we talked about this in the episode, both episodes that we did with Brom and Nate previously, I think that.

that for a while, you know, HDR was a little bit of a country club ecosystem, right? It was happening at the highest end, at the highest productions, etc. And now that that's trickled down, right? I think that people are- A big, big part of this in my opinion is when Apple decided to make all their iPhones take photos and videos and display photos and videos in HDR by default. Right now you have an entire swath of the consumer landscape doing their everyday, day-to-day interaction with a device, and now they're seeing

HDR where they weren't seeing HDR before. And they just kind, they don't know, you know, the average user might not know, hey, I shot this photo on my iPhone in HDR and I'm looking at it in HDR and it looks really good. They just know that if I have my iPhone and I take a picture with it, it looks better now. And if somebody else with an iPhone sends me a picture that they took, it looks better on this display. Is that something that is actually tangibly kind of improving and moving the industry forward, kind of having these manufacturers really put more HDR into everything. Are people adopting HDR more now than they have before, or is it still kind of that niche nerdy thing for us display geeks?

No, I think the good thing is that I think you're correct in the sense that from my point of you and you know, you talk to most folks Adobe would unanimously agree that HGR is as accessible as it's ever been. And a big proponent of that, like you mentioned, is the Apple ecosystem. Obviously, they have the scale and the just raw numbers to support something like this, right? Just to give kind of like a side antidote, a lot of the trainings I start, especially when I'm doing trainings for folks that are maybe newer to HDR, not as well-versed. think of like universities, education partners, things like that. Whenever I am in person I like to do, one of the first questions I'll ask is like,

hey, who here has, you know, knowingly watched any sort of Dolby vision or gone to like a Dolby cinema? And if you have like a 50 person class, you usually get, you know, a handful of hands, right? And I'll say like, okay, who has an iPhone 10 or later? And then, you know, like 75% of the class raises their hand. And I'm like, any of you guys ever watch like your streaming services on there? And, you know, everybody, you know, keeps their hand up. I'm like, okay, so without even knowing it, you've been watching HGR, WVVision for years now, right?

And this is even, you know, permeating into things like social media. I mean, we have a ton of, ton of influence going on in that space. And we're seeing the numbers there. I mean, we have a lot of social media platforms overseas launching HGR and vision capabilities. I mean, YouTube, you can even upload on HDR and YouTube now. So, like, there's a lot of cool momentum there. But to your point, Joey, I think that the thing we're seeing is that, while it's accessible, I don't think a lot of people really know that they're watching it, right?

Is that a success? Is that a bad thing? Yeah, I was going to say that kind of success of the, you know, like if the technology means seamless, right? Instead of making somebody to think about it, they're just getting, they go and they go, oh, I got this all the vision TV, I'm getting better, better results. That seems like a win too. So when do we get to, if you had to put your crystal ball, when do we get to the ideal, my ideal world of HDR is just the default? and we're kind of looking at SDR like we look at four by three safe.

That's a really good question. I'd be curious to hear Rob and David's answers to that, but I would say we're at least still another like five years out. I think there's a lot of hesitation in kind of the legacy creative community as well. I know, especially on set is an issue that we've seen in the past. And we've tried to address that pretty directly at Dolby with a lot of our newer education initiatives and helping folks better understand how to manage HDR on set too. But I think the good news is that, again, as the displays become more accessible, the price barrier to get into HDR on set and during, you know, content acquisition has come down quite a bit too.

And I've heard a lot of, you know, pretty high up DPs saying, like, you can't really use the budget excuse anymore. Like, this is something that you should be considering. But I think that also requires like a pretty big overhaul on education as well, right? I mean, you get into any of these top echelon of film schools in the U.S. and even overseas, like, you know, they're, teaching STR predominantly still, right? And that needs to change to enable the next generation of content creators, right? But I think having accessibility on iPhones and social media being able to do it certainly helps. I don't know if Brom or Dave wants to speak to that too. Well, I have one more thing to add just before we move on to chatting with David. And I think this is kind of a question about the

intersection of Brahms sphere and your sphere, right? Bram, like the work that Dolby does as sort of a, I think of Dolby often as like a research company, but they're sort of like a almost like pseudo standards body, right? Because they're doing all this R&D. I mean, they're not a standards body, but you know what I'm saying. Like they do all this R&D. They're having the high level meetings with Simti, ITU, etc. I guess my question is the work that that Dolby does, Nate does, etc. How much does that inform, you know, kind of like some of the things that you guys do on your end, the choices that you make, the standards that you're adhering to, that kind of stuff? Because I think that like, as Joey pointed out, with Dolby, it's like, okay, cool.

Like they put their badge on something, get some licensing fees and move on. But it seems to me for a company like yours, there's a lot more value behind the scenes happening with something that Dolby's doing, like that work that Dolby's doing, right? Is that a fair assessment? Yeah, 100%. I mean, what we do is, you know, we look to and lean on Dolby a lot for guidance on what would be a best practice, you know, what design objectives we should be trying to strive for. And I interface with Nate a ton.

I think Nate and I probably speak every month or two. Just catch up about everything in the industry and try to learn about what Dolby's working on, what Dolby's interests are, how we can better facilitate content creators trying to make Dolby vision. And I think the answer to Joey's earlier question in terms of when does it become the default, I think we can safely say that HDR will be the default when it's no longer a premium add-on for most of the street. streaming services. So I think when you sign up for a service and the price is just the default gives you H.S. Not that extra six bucks a month or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. That's when we'll be there. And I think that's going to happen. That's going to be, it's going to be one of these things

where people are like, of course it needs to be HBR. So we're not quite there yet. But I think we're making huge strides in that direction. And yeah, like I said, we do lean a lot on Dolby's guidance there and try to cater to, you know, what they see is the pain points in the industry. as well within the limits of what display technology can do. But yeah, we look to them a lot for advice and guidance. Very cool. Well, David, you have been sitting there so patiently waiting for us to chat. Thank you for that.

I have to say, David, we did a, Joey and I did a, like, overview of calibration episode a couple of weeks ago and we really sit out there. And all I could think was recording when we were recording was that hopefully you weren't going to, it wasn't going to land anywhere on your desk and you weren't going to see it, right? I was operating from a place of fear out of this because I have to be honest with you. You are a, I don't know, I mean, all of you guys are, but I also, I consider you to be an industry giant, right? And it's just one of those things where it's just sort of like, okay, don't say anything wrong. Don't get corrected by David.

Anybody who knows you realizes that you're just the sweetest guy and that's not your MO in general. But I will say that we're really excited to have you on here because I think we could be, and we definitely need to do this again with you, revisit our calibration episode because it's such a deep and complex topic and you're one of the experts. So again, appreciate your patience, but I have some questions for you if you're willing. So I wanted to start out with you sort of this idea of kind of, kind of, of the consumer versus professional landscape when it comes to calibration, right? So like, you know, I think that in my perspective, what's exciting is that TVs are getting better, right? That the performance of TVs are vast improved. And more importantly,

so many more consumers are aware of kind of the idea of how calibration can improve their general investment, you know, in their TV to get it looking at its best. But I wanted to start by like this idea between professional and consumer like when it comes to calibration and the quality of this displays having seen 25,000 or how many you've calibrated is that a tangible difference in terms of accuracy and quality between the consumer market high-end consumer market even let's say and in the professional world are you literally getting something that's more accurate if you buy a quote-unquote professional display versus a consumer display if that makes sense

Well, first off, thank you for having me. And I am honored to be your third guest ever. Yeah, it's amazing. In terms of the calibration of displays, I think a lot of that comes down to, you know, the target audience, right, and the budgets that we have. So when you look at a consumer TV manufacturer, there's only so much time they can put towards calibrating that display on the assembly line, right? going to that factory because the longer they have it on that line, the less they're getting

through, the higher the costs go up. And when you look at broadcast monitors in the professional market, you know, people like FSI, they have a lot more time, right? They can put a little more time. Of course, we also see those costs go up, right? You know, you might be paying, I don't know, Bron, what is it, $12,000 for an XMP310. Are you going to pay $12,000 for a 32-inch monitor in the consumer space? You're probably not going to be paying that kind of money.

but Brom's able to maybe do a better factory calibration because he'll put a little more time and energy into that. So we do see on the pro side, most manufacturers putting in more time and energy into making sure they're getting a display to their customer that has a higher level of accuracy. The question we always have in Brom and I talk about this all the time is just because you've got a display from even FSI doesn't mean it's set up right.

And what I mean by that is it comes in one mode, right? It comes in, let's say 7 or 9. You can't just plug it in and start grading P3. You have to go in the menu. You have to change it to what you're working in. And so that's something that if you bring a calibrator out to your facility, we'll usually say, what's the mode you're working in, how's your system set up? Oh, you're in full range.

Let me make sure this monitor's in full range, right? So you can get a monitor from a manufacturer that might be very well calibrated, but you still have to know how to use it. And that's very, very important because it doesn't matter how. perfect your Mars calibrated if it's not in parity with the signal you're sending. That ruins the whole thing. So we see that. On the consumer side, we do see things getting better.

We see displays getting more predictable. We see technology getting more stable. And so we do start to see things coming off the assembly line a little bit better. And for Avical with my calibration hat on, that's not the best thing for an independent calibrator saying, hey, they're getting better off the line. Don't worry, they're not perfect yet. There's still improvement to be made, okay? He's like, don't everybody that's calibrating run.

But for portrait, it's actually good because we actually make some of the technology now being used in several factors. By those TV manufacturers, sure. So Portrait is actually working with manufacturers on the line to apply some of our technologies there. So it's good for portrait that we're starting to get next on the line. The independent calibrator, I still think it's good. I still think there's enough for the independent calibrator out there to make improvement that's noticeable. So, David, I think one of the next questions, I have is just sort of the complexity of calibration.

I know when I get started, and something I've spoken to Brom about in the past, is that if you're not doing this every single day, the software, the tools, et cetera, can be complicated, can be intimidating. From your perspective, like the state of calibration these days, is it still difficult? Is it something that's accessible to colorists like me

or to an end user? Like, where does that sit? Because it seems like more and more people are aware anyway, of the benefits of calibration and its need, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're taking it on themselves. Like, where is that sit kind of now, you know, with modern tools and modern software? I think calibration has gotten more difficult and at the same time easier in a lot of ways. It's kind of, it's kind of hard to explain. So when I started calibrating, it was CRTs. And we would even open up the CRT and take the glare screen off. You had the first. You had the

Fernel inticular and you had the glare screen, you take the glare screen off so you could have that matte finish. You wouldn't have this huge reflection because 25 years ago, those were pretty obtrusive glare screens. They're not like some of what we have today with modern displays. And we turn the trim pots and we maybe do focus on the CRTs and then spend hours doing convergence. And you might have convergence for all these memories. So you have a lot of physical stuff that happened years ago, but you only had so many adjustments when it came to dial. let's say you're gray scale and you might have had cuts and gains. You might have only had choose a gamma. There was no tracking any OTF or doing a 1D lookup table. I feel like in those days,

they fought each other a lot more, right? It was you change one, you change pedestal and then everything else kind of needs to be. It's a lot more dialing one thing in and then dialing another thing back to compensate. Absolutely. And so you'd go back and forth and you'd have very few actual controls of the image compared to today, but you'd have a lot of physical stuff you could do that would really, really improve the image. So that combined into a really great image when you were done calibrary.

Today, there's almost no physical adjustments on a lot of these flat panels, right? I mean, you have physical adjustments on projectors, but you don't really have it on these flat panels, but now you have very complicated image processing paths where you can do 1D lookup tables, 3D lookup tables, you can do different EOTF,

tracking, you can, there's just, there's just so much you can do. And then you add into the complexity back then, it was really one calibration you were doing, whether that was for CMPTC or BT 7 or 9. Now, you're calibrating for SDR, HDR, and often Dolby Fission. So now you have three calibrations in that one calibration session, and that just makes the complexity that other level. Now, we also didn't have software like CalMan, you know, 20, well, I shouldn't say 20 years ago, because 20 years ago, Calman came out and we're celebrating our 20th and anniversary this year. But 22 years ago, we didn't have CalMAN to make things easy. So now with the software that we have and the software tools that are out there in the marketplace, it is much

easier to quantify a display, understand what the display is doing, and make those decisions, and they can help guide you through that process to success. So even though they've gotten more complicated from a display adjustment standpoint and an image processing standpoint, the software has tried to keep up with helping users achieve their success with that calibration process. Yeah, that makes sense, yeah. Yeah, I think it's getting easier. I think we're getting easier, and we're going to keep trying to make it easier over time. So another thing that pops to mind is when it comes to calibration is that I think,

like anything else, there seems to be levels to this, right? I mean, just take look at some of the hardware, right? There's, you know, go to the old Apple store and buy a little, you know, relatively cheap colorimeter, put it on the monitor. you're, you know, Bob's your uncle, but then there's, you know, $10,000, $20,000. This was how, how important is the, the level or quality of, of gear, specifically when it comes to meters in pattern generators, the hardware aspect of this for achieving success, right? I think a lot of people, I know Joey and I talk to a ton of colorists that go, yeah, cool.

I know calibration's important, but it's not $20,000 important to me, right? Like, are there good results that can be had somewhere in the middle? Like, speak to that a little bit because it seems like there's just a lot of variability in terms of cost and functionality when it comes to some of this gear. Yeah, so this is the question the geeks get into, which is the how accurate is accurate enough. And as you go up in equipment capability, right, when you get into somebody's higher and laboratory-grade, colorimeters and spectrachyometers, you get a higher level of precision, right, in those measurements. You get a higher level repeatability precision.

You get a little more confidence that what you're measuring is going to be accurate based on you. Maybe it has a two nanometer bandwidth on a spectro versus a 10 nanometer bandwidth on a different spectrum. But a colorimeter and even a low-cost device can be quite accurate if it's profiled, what we called profiled or has a correction table, right, for that specific display. So those, we're starting to see more of that happen at Portrait, right, where we have our C6HCR 5,000 colorimeter, and we have a lab now that we build profiles for it for our customers for Calman in there.

So if you have a profile, you can get a really good result in comparison to, say, a $20, $40,000 spectrometer. If you don't have a profile, you're going to have a little more error in that reading, and how much that's going to be is going to be dependent on how far off the profile you're using is. So you could have a generic W-R-G-B-O-led profile might be really great on Model A, but Model B has a different type of panel. It's an MLA panel, and you're going to have a larger error because you're using a profile from one for another. Once you get that calibration of the probe out of the way, then it starts to be come down, what's the capability of the probe itself?

So if you're working on a monitor that says, say, has a really great black level, quantum dot OLED, WRGB OLED, the JOLED panels we saw on some of the monitors, like the LG 32 EP950, those go pretty darn close to black, if not perfect black. And if you're trying to calibrate a one-d-lookup table, how low can you measure with your meter and get a reliable reading? And that starts to become really important with these. So, you know, if you're calibrating a monot that only has gains and bias, maybe you don't care that you can't measure 0.05 minutes because you can't adjust it. If you can't adjust it, you might not care.

But if you can adjust it, and then you're using that probe, you just can't measure accurately down there, well, you're going to increase your error. So I guess to answer your question, I think there's some really great low-cost color emitters on the market. And if you know the limitations of those products, if you know what they can do and what you might be fighting against, in terms of getting that ultimate accuracy, they're just fine. And then if you want to go up that next level to those higher-end probes, you just get that confidence. It's that confidence that, you know, you're going to get that confidence that, hey, I know I've got a probe.

It's lab grade. It's right. I can measure anything with this. Yeah. I'm going to get the same result. Yeah, I mean, I often think about calibration as like the truth, right? So like that makes a lot of sense that sort of, you know, the more accurate you can be, the more truth that you're seeing.

I guess the question sort of a part B to that is like is that difference between using the higher end gear and you know, you know, entry level gear. Is it enough to be a noticeable difference to the view, to the person looking at that monitor? Or is this is this the case of no, oh, we're getting this prettier nicer graphs kind of thing? You know, like, but visually it doesn't really matter. Like I think a lot of people debate that whether it's something they can. Robbie loves to chase pretty calibration. I do like a pretty graph. That is that is for sure. That is for sure. Dave and I have used, I think, for as long as we've known each other, is degrees of accuracy.

Accuracy is a binary accurate or inaccurate thing when it comes to calibration. It's all about degrees of accuracy. And that is a sliding scale with a lot of steps in between. No, I agree with that, Brom. I think that, you know, for a user like me who's who admittedly has a level of OCD that a lot of people don't have. I am, you know, I can't tell you how many times I've had conversations with the Brahms sometimes very late at night being like, all right, man, well, I'm nervous because point seven seems high versus point six. I'd really like it to be point six, you know, um, that kind of thing.

And he walks me off and on off a ledge, but I think that, you know, that's, that's a consideration that people have like if I'm going to invest all that much money, that much money, am I really getting something that's tangibly different in terms of what I'm seeing on the display? It comes down to, again, I think what you're trying to do with it, right? So if I try to take a lower cost colorimeter and I calibrate an LG OLED, for example, and I've done this. I've actually done this myself to see the same difference you're talking about.

My coming out of black on that LGO lead will be a little different than if I take, say, my CR 100 and I do it. And I can see that if I look at a pattern, like if I look at a shallow gray ramp or I look at, you know, maybe something really dark off like Spears and Munsell, and I can, say, oh, look, I can see a little difference between these two images. For a consumer, how dramatic is that? Probably not super dramatic for a colorist and a content creator that's, you know, nitpicking every little thing.

It's probably going to be the end of the world. Having worked for the colorist, we'll see, oh, this shadow doesn't quite match in this scene on this monitor versus that monitor, and you go, well, I need to change But we don't see many pro-calibrators using some of these lower-end probes. And one of those things, and this is something Brahmin and I have talked about recently, and I'm tempted to just try and get this new meter from Manulta that's super fast. And what I was going to say is we don't see a lot of pros using these probes if they're calibrating as a service like Avical is because they take a long time, right?

So when you spend more money, you often get a little more sensitivity, you get a little more speed, right? So your CR 100, your Klein, your Manalta CA 527, they're going to be a lot faster. So you can achieve the calibration much quicker. And so time starts to become money, but you're not only getting that speed, you're also getting that increase in precision from these devices. So it's kind of a win-win if you're doing it as a business to invest in that better gear and get in, get out faster along with those better results. So I think, again, if you're in that pro level, it's worth.

worth having that consistency and that accuracy and whatnot from these higher probes. But if you're in the consumer world, yeah, the lower cost probes that are on the market are doing a great job. I think the most important thing for me is making sure, one, you have a meter profile for the type of display you want to measure, and two, making sure it's adequate for the display you want to measure. You wouldn't buy a probe that only does 1,000 nits if you're trying to calibrate a 3,000 knit monitor.

If you know you're building a lot that goes near black, you want to make sure that your probe can measure near black. So those considerations start to become less as you go up in the tiers because a lot of these higher end probes can measure really wide dynamic ranges and you don't have to think about it as much. And one last one for you before we wrap up this, this part of our discussion with you guys. I think one other question is that, you know, I buy a display and it comes and says, oh, hey, it's been calibrated at the factory, right? So I'm trusting that to a certain degree. But I think people know that, hey, I live with the display for a year or so. like I need to, you know, recalibrate it.

In your opinion, like, what's the recalibration process, like the necessity of it, right? Like, how often should somebody be going, hey, I need to, you know, validate or recalibrate this display? Is it, can you put a number on it? Is it every quarter? Is it every, you know, six months? Like, is there a time demarcation? Or is it more of just, hey, that's a personal preference.

Do it whenever you feel like doing it to reassure yourself? Yeah. This comes down sort of to the customer, right? So we have customers that are all over the place. When you think about a home user, we have some customers that will call up a calibrator or recalibrate themselves every six to 12 months. Realistically, at Avicel, I tell my customers about every 18 months if you're a home user, averaging about three hours a day, you know, figure they're putting on around 1,500 hours, it's going to have drifted, it has some aging, let's bring that back in.

When you start bringing the content creators, you start looking at displays that are being used 40, 50, 60 hours a week. And so at that point, it also comes down to are you using it 40 hours a week in HDR or are using it 40 hours a week in SDR? Our general rule of thumb is about every six months for a colorist and about once a year for an editor. Yeah, the editor's model is going to drift, but if they're not really doing serious color timing and color grading at the end, then they can let it drift a little longer if they

want. We did an experiment with a studio a few years ago where we were coming out every quarter. for about a year and we were quantifying some broadcast mires and we were quantifying the LGO leads that were on the wall. What we found was the LGs were drifting in the quarter a little more than the broadcast monitors, right? The broadcast monitors were staying much more stable over that amount of time. And what we came up with about every six months is probably pretty good for this particular studio where they're not really seeing a difference in parity between the broadcast mar and the LG until about that six months point. And the goal is, I stress this to all your listeners, try to get ahead of it, right?

The point of recalibration, the point of making sure you stay dialed in is so that you don't end up with the fire drill. Because once the client see something and you start getting notes or you start getting someone in your bay questioning, then it becomes the fire drill. And then it's, oh, we need someone here right away and we need to go. Oh, yeah. And there's loss of loss of trust, like all sorts of issues involved in. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So we try to keep up with our customers, at least at Avical. We try to keep with our customers. Every six to eight months, we'll send reminders out to our studio customers and say, hey, it's been about this long. You know, are you interested in setting up a recalibration appointment? Some of them do it like clockwork. Some of them wait until the project's over. Maybe it's another season. We have a lot of TV shows we work on where they'll do it every season. And they'll just say, you know, it's good for the season. But again, that six to eight months is usually pretty good for a studio. And I'd say about every. every 18 months to two years for consumers pretty decent for most people.

Awesome. Well, I think I have some more questions, but I tell you what, let's hold off on those additional questions for all three of you for a part two, because we have a lot more to ask you, a lot more to dive in. But hopefully this gives everybody sort of a high level overview of kind of have these sort of disparate parts, you know, these guys sort of roles in the display industry kind of gel together, from display manufacturing to validation and kind of standards to actually, you know, the technical part of getting to make sure that these displays are as accurate as possible with calibration.

Very cool stuff, guys, but hopefully you'll stick with us for another part where we'll fire some rapid fire questions off for you. As a reminder for any of our viewers, you can always head over to offsetpodcast.com and get some show notes. We'll definitely have some show notes for these episodes. You can always follow us on social media on Instagram or Facebook. Just search for the Offset Podcast. And you can find us on all major streaming platforms as well as YouTube, just sort of search for the Offset Podcast. All right, so stay tuned for a part two.

Very big thanks to all three of our guests for joining us on this episode. But we'll be back in just a little bit for part two and diving into more depth. So for the Offset Podcast, I'm Robbie Carman. And I'm Joey Deanna. Thanks for listening.