LG Display wants to change the way you see color, or at least develop a way to ensure that the colors you perceive are the same as the colors everyone else sees. To that end, LG Display has developed its own “Color Perception Difference Measurement Method,” which has been recognized as a global standard by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

The IEC announced the news in a blog post, emphasizing that the new technical specification “calculates and quantifies the difference between machine-accurately measured colors for seven standard colors under near-natural lighting and colors as seen by the human eye. The smaller this difference, the more “accurate” the color is for the viewer as a whole.

Why is this important? Well, slight color differences can occur in one's living room countless times depending on the time of day, the type of content being watched, and even the entire audience present. If you have multiple color correction editors working on the same TV show or movie, you want to make sure that each editor is seeing the same shades as they work.

Much has been said about how we perceive color, and it can be attributed to many different factors, including gender, genetics, age, memory, and mood. Medications, illness, and even altitude can affect how we perceive color. But when it comes to the best TVs, even something as simple as a white screen can look different on the same display to two different individuals.

LG claims that the best LG TVs are so well constructed because they use organic white light-emitting diodes that emulate natural light. Therefore, under the new standard, the company's OLED TVs have a color perception difference value of 10%, which is considered the lowest in the industry. Perhaps that is why LG manufactures the best OLED TVs in the industry, but of course color is not everything.

LG Display cites this very example in its blog post, noting that “even when looking at the same white, different people see different things, such as blurred white or yellow on white.” And for a long time, these variations, often very slight to be fair, were not accurately represented in the test results.

In most cases we use Delta-E to measure the color accuracy of our displays. It is actually interesting to note that the recent LG B4 OLED TV has a Delta-E score of 4.8561, which is quite high. For content, the LG C3 OLED, arguably one of the best 65-inch TVs at this price, has a Delta-E of 1.3908, which means it is one of the most accurate TVs right out of the box before calibration.

There is no shortage of TV terminology, including format names (HDR10+), display types (OLED), and screen technologies (WCG). The good news is that this new color perceptual difference evaluation method will not set the world on fire. But it will be a good tool for TV manufacturers to provide uniform and accurate color to as many viewers as possible.

Why do we see different colors? These differences are caused by differences in the inherent sensitivity of photoreceptor cells, which can be seen at higher levels of individual red, green, and blue (RGB) pixels.

LG states that its OLED TVs “mitigate this phenomenon by using white organic light-emitting diodes to implement a spectrum of light closer to natural light,” and this new metric is just one way to verify that claim.

While it is too early to say what the company's next TV lineup will look like in terms of performance, color accuracy, etc., the emphasis here is on color perception, and the company is clearly thinking outside the box when it comes to how TVs will appear in various scenarios thinking.

Will the LG C5 OLED and LG G5 OLED be the most color-accurate TVs ever? We will have to wait for the announcement at CES in 2025.