Sony has announced a new “next-generation display system” based upon a “high density LED backlight” with individual control over the red, green and blue primary colors. The new display tech is being developed for both consumer TVs and professional displays, and will “begin mass production in 2025,” according to the company.
While Sony’s official announcement cites 2025 as the launch date for its new RGB LED tech, the company confirmed it as a “2026 technology” at a recent demonstration I attended at its Tokyo headquarters. That confirmation means we will more realistically see it arrive in new TVs next year, or possibly in 2027.
LCD TVs with RGB backlights aren’t exactly new – Sony developed RGB LED models as far back as 2004, and at the recent CES 2025, Samsung and TCL both had prototype mini-LED TVs with RGB backlights on display, while Hisense showed off a real RGB model it plans to release later this year.
But Sony’s new version promises to take things to the next level by combining an RGB backlight with the XR Backlight Master Drive tech it developed for the Sony Bravia 9 mini-LED TV, the company’s flagship model and one of the best TVs of 2024.
How it differs from regular LED TVs
The LED light modules in conventional LED and mini-LED TVs emit blue light that passes through filters to create full-color images. RGB LED tech, in contrast, uses LED modules with individual red, green, and blue elements, with the light funneled directly to the pixels in the LCD panel without passing through additional color filter layers.
This method allows for more granular brightness and color modulation: Sony’s specifications cite 4,000 nits peak brightness – around twice what most mini-LED TVs deliver – along with 99% DCI-P3 color space coverage and 90% BT.2020 coverage.
The XR Backlight Master Drive tech in Sony’s Bravia 9 TV uses a highly miniaturized 22-bit LED driver that increases the granular level of its dimming control (conventional mini-LED TVs use 10- or 12-bit drivers). For Sony’s new RGB LED tech, the backlight control has been increased to 66 bits (22 each for red, green, and blue).
This also enables a boost in color volume (up to four times over a standard QLED, according to Sony) – a benefit that can be seen not just in bright colors but in darker hues.
Other RGB LED benefits
Along with the increase in brightness, color space coverage, and color volume, Sony’s new RGB LED tech promises to expand the viewing angle of the display – a traditional limitation with LCD TVs. When viewing from off-center seats, the color filtering process used by typical LED and mini-LED TVs is prone to blooming and color shift, which reduces picture contrast and color saturation.
With Sony’s new RGB LED tech, the red, green, and blue components in the backlight are routed to corresponding pixels in the LCD panel with a high-precision level of light control. There is still potential for blooming, but color shift is minimized, enabling colors to retain their purity at both on- and off-axis viewing angles.
Screen size is another benefit to Sony’s tech. OLED TVs are available in sizes up to 97 inches, but it currently isn’t cost-effective to produce them in sizes above 83 inches – hence, the steep price jump from around $5,000 for an 83-inch OLED like the LG G4 to around $20,000 for the 97-inch version.
Sony claims that LCD TVs using its new RGB LED tech can be scaled up to ultra-large screen sizes more cost-effectively than OLED TVs, which will allow for the development of 100-inch-plus displays that, unlike OLED, can compete price-wise with conventional mini-LED models.
RGB LED in action
My recent visit to Sony’s Tokyo headquarters included an extensive demonstration session with the new RGB LED tech. A prototype TV was set up on its own, and a second one was displayed next to the company’s flagship Bravia 9 – however, I wasn’t able to take any photos or videos of it, sadly.
Sony’s demo largely verified its claims for its new technology. Images had striking color saturation and detail, and there was virtually no visible backlight blooming – the prototype TV was better than the Bravia 9 in this respect. Colors in darker images also maintained good saturation, and the picture contrast had the same “infinite” quality you typically see on the best OLED TVs.
Equally impressive was the prototype TV’s off-axis picture quality. Colors looked equally uniform and bright when viewed at extreme angles, and contrast levels were retained. That level of performance is something you normally only see with OLED TVs, and QD-OLED models in particular, so seeing it on a mini-LED TV was an entirely new experience for me.
Another aspect of the demo I found impressive was the anti-reflective screen used for Sony’s prototype TV. The Bravia 9’s X-Anti Reflection screen proved to be very effective at reducing glare from overhead lights when I tested it, but the prototype TV sitting next to the Bravia 9 in Sony’s brightly lit demo room even more effectively eliminated it.
Checkmate OLED?
While it’s true that the demo I saw of Sony’s new RGB LED TV prototype was the closest I’ve seen LCD tech come to rivalling OLED – something I previously stated about the Bravia 9 – I’m sure OLED still has plenty of life in it yet.
The opportunity here for Sony and other companies working on TVs with RGB backlights is to boost mini-LED performance factors – specifically, color space coverage, black uniformity, contrast, and off-axis uniformity – to a level that rivals OLED TVs.
If they can do that while maintaining competitive pricing, OLED will have good reason to sweat.
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al.griffin@futurenet.com (Al Griffin)
