LG Announces 32UD99: 4K IPS Display with 95% DCI-P3, HDR and USB-C
by Anton Shilov on December 14, 2016 7:00 PM EST
LG on Wednesday announced its new flagship display with a UHD 4K resolution, DCI-P3 color gamut, as well as HDR10 support. The LG 32UD99 will be aimed at creative professionals, prosumers and gamers, which suggests more or less reasonable pricing as well as some allowances to handle Microsoft Windows' quirky color management (through support of sRGB). The monitor will be demonstrated at CES next month and will hit the market some time in 2017.
The LG 32UD99 will a 32” display featuring a 10-bit IPS panel that can reproduce 1.07 billion colors and cover over 95% of the DCI-P3 color space, while LG has said nothing about the sRGB and the Adobe RGB color spaces. The monitor will support 10-bit HDR capabilities, but LG is not disclosing details about its LUTs (look-up-tables) and so on. Finally, LG says that the 32UD99 will be able to connect to computers using a single USB Type-C cable (using DisplayPort Alternate Mode) that will also support charging capabilities. Other notable features that LG mentioned in its press release are thin bezels as well as “slim” stand.
| Preliminary Specifications of the LG 32UD99 | ||
| Panel | 32" IPS | |
| Resolution | 3840 × 2160 | |
| Refresh Rate | 60 Hz (?) | |
| Viewing Angles | 178°/178° horizontal/vertical | |
| Color Saturation | Over 95% DCI-P3 | |
| Display Colors | 1.07 billion | |
| 3D-LUT | supported | |
| Inputs | 1 × USB-C 1 × HDMI 2.0a (?) |
|
| Audio | Stereo speakers featuring LG RichBass technology | |
The manufacturer is positioning its 32UD99 for different types of applications. Specifically, the company says that the monitor is “well-equipped” to support HDR-capable game consoles, which suggests that it can at least connect them using an HDMI 2.0a port because Sony’s PlayStation 4 Pro and NVIDIA’s SHIELD ATV (the only HDR-capable game consoles available today) do not have a USB-C header. Moreover, neither game console currently support DCI-P3 color space, which means that the display would need to support sRGB alongside HDR10.
Meanwhile, the support for DCI-P3 and HDR10 means that the display will appeal to professionals from the gaming, digital cinema, home theater and software industries. The consumer standard for DCI is used by a number of consumer electronics devices as well as a variety of Apple devices (and has good prospects to be adopted for televisions as well), and while LG isn't confirming that they're going with the consumer version (as opposed to the digital projection version with its different white point and gamma), it's reasonable to assume that like their other DCI-capable monitors, the 32UD99 will follow the consumer standard as well. Though it may very well be that HDR becomes the most distinctive feature, as HDR support in monitors is currently few and far between. Now, since the LG 32UD99 covers “over 95%” of the DCI-P3 color space (and not 98 – 99% like many professional-grade monitors like LG’s own 31MU97 do), the manufacturer does not straightforward say that the 32UD99 is going to be its new flagship model for creative professionals, but rather points to prosumers and demanding gamers.
Since LG made a preliminary announcement of the monitor this week, it naturally did not disclose all of its specifications leaving many questions unanswered. Nonetheless, it looks like the 32UD99 will be a considerably more universal display than LG’s UltraFine lineup of monitors designed solely with Apple’s macOS and Mac hardware in mind.
Today, LG only announced plans to demonstrate its 32UD99 display at CES, which is why it did not touch upon its pricing and estimated availability timeframe. While it is logical to expect the LG 32UD99 to hit the market sometimes next year at a price that will be above that of average 32” UHD models, that is all we can share at this point.
Related Reading:
- LG Introduces New UltraFine 4K and 5K Monitors
- BenQ Launches the SW320: a 4K Display with HDR for Professionals
- Dell Introduces UltraSharp UP3017 30-Inch Professional Display with 16:10 Aspect Ratio and DCI-P3 Color Space
- EIZO Launches FlexScan EV2780: 27” 2560×1440 Display with USB Type-C Connector
- EIZO Launches ColorEdge CG2730 and CS2730 2560×1440 Displays for Professionals and Prosumers
Source: LG
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halcyon - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
More like luminosity (or brightness) volume. Not more chroma, but more absolute brightness and more absolute contrast.A5 - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
If you have HDR content available, it's the real deal. In TVs, it is the real reason to buy a 4K set from a PQ perspective.Assimilator87 - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
This article is an absolute mess, not unlike the actual HDR standards themselves, the two main contenders being HDR10 Media Profile and Dolby Vision. After a couple hours of research, I'll admit I'm actually more confused. Mainly, the confusion appears to stem from people misinterpreting HDR, a single feature; which I'd best describe as a significantly expanded contrast ratio from the current standards; as being synonymous with the specific HDR standards mentioned above, which encompass guidelines for HDR; color bit depth; and color gamut as a package. As others have commented already, the Xbox One S and Playstation 4 also support HDR, specifically HDR10. The HDR10 format specifies a baseline of the Rec. 2020 (ITU-R Recommendation BT.2020) color space, 10-bits per sample color depth, and a few other criteria.As a bit of background, the CIE 1931 color space represents the spectrum that the human visual system can physically see. Rec. 2020 encompasses 75.8% of that spectrum, 53.6% for DCI-P3, 52.1% for Adobe RGB, and 35.9% for Rec. 709/sRGB. Taking into consideration the vast range in quality of displays that all claim to support HDR, with even the top models only just hovering around 100% coverage of DCI-P3, it may initially be confusing how each display would correctly reproduce the source material. That's where a transfer function comes into play.
The transfer function is basically an algorithm stored in metadata that plots the range and intensity of color and luminance. The display manufacturers, knowing the capabilities of each tier of their products, incorporates what I would imagine is an inverse decoder of the TF to correctly map/compress the data. Both HDR10 and Dolby Vision use a TF called Perceptual Quantizer, which has been specified formally as SMPTE ST 2084. Factoring in all that mind numbing, soul crushing information, ratified by a bazillion different consortiums, it's not correct that "...the display would need to support sRGB..." for the aforementioned HDR capable consoles. They all process in Rec. 2020 and the content would be mapped accordingly to each system and display.
Please correct or clarify me if any information I've presented is incorrect or misleading. This whole HDR ecosystem is incredibly exciting as a concept, but astronomically complex in terms of execution.
TL;DR: Article needs a couple corrections:
1. Xbox One S and Playstation 4 also have HDR.
2. Consoles' max output of DCI-P3 ≠ Display fallback to sRGB
Home theater sucks.
nathanddrews - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
Don't forget about BT.2100. ;-)BrokenCrayons - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
"The LG 32UD99 will be aimed at creative professionals, prosumers and gamers..."I can't see them aiming that screen at anyone else. The rest of us aren't as willing to be milked for cash because we like lounging on our money like dragons atop our hordes. Those in their target audience are either obtaining their hardware with money that's invisible to them because it's coming out of a company expense account or are lined up on the milking carousel willingly because 4K displays make them more l33t.
Holliday75 - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
I am going to the bank after work to withdraw all my cash so I can sleep on it tonight.BrokenCrayons - Friday, December 16, 2016 - link
That's a slightly more literal interpretation than was trying to convey, but why not? Physical currency is very sanitary stuff. :)KoolAidMan1 - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
Good lord that's tempting. No Thunderbolt 3 ports is the only thing that's missing, otherwise it seems great.stun - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
All of you forgot to notice that there are NO graphics card on the market with a USB-C port output! That means we can expect to hear about new cards from AMD and Nvidia with USB-C ports.quickcorrect - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link
The article incorrectly states that the PS4 and Nvidia Shield are the only HDR capable consoles currently available. The Xbox One S also supports HDR.