Yep, you read correctly, Dolby has just released a professional reference monitor. I got a peek at the display in the Dolby booth with David Yang, marketing guru. This once audio-only company is showing the PRM-4200 LCD monitor. The monitor accurately shows true and deep black levels with higher contrast across the entire color spectrum. It offers high luminance range and level.
The LCD panel uses a backlight composed of red, green, and blue LEDs that are modulated individually on a frame-by-frame basis. It also uses what Dolby calls, a "dual modulation" process. Yang said the monitor would be available later this year.
The second, and more traditionally Dolby, release is the company's open specification for the transmission of 3-D. The Dolby open specification will enable professional equipment vendors to create frame-compatible tools with an open packing format that allows 3-D signals to be processed through a standard 2-D infrastructure. The specification is fully compatible with enhancement layer approaches, enabling extensibility to full-resolution 3-D in the future. Both of these items and others are on display in the Dolby booth, SU7917.
