[News] Sony Releases New RGB LED Backlight Technology

March 14, Sony officially released a new generation of RGB LED backlight technology system, achieving a peak brightness of 4000 nits. Sony plans to start mass production of this system in 2025 and will launch the first commercial product featuring this technology at CES in January 2026.

It is reported that as early as 2004, Sony launched the world’s first LCD TV with a full-array RGB LED backlight. Since then, Sony has continuously improved the precision of backlight control and conducted in-depth research on LED component characteristics.

Sony’s new-generation RGB LED backlight technology system achieves a wide color gamut performance through independently driven RGB LEDs. The independent color emission ensures high color purity, allowing the display to cover over 99% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and approximately 90% of the ITU-R BT.2020² standard.

In addition, this system features dynamic allocation of the optimal power for RGB channels, intelligently adjusting the light source distribution according to specific scenes. Unlike traditional high-brightness TVs that enhance only high-brightness elements such as stars or the moon in night scenes, Sony’s technology coordinates brightness adjustment with color gradients. Meanwhile, this system can achieve a peak brightness of over 4000 cd/m².

Furthermore, the display system adopts 96-bit high-bit-rate signal processing, providing high-speed and high-precision signal processing capabilities. It not only presents deeper blacks and brighter whites simultaneously but also delicately reproduces light and shadow variations in images containing numerous mid-tone shades, making the light and shadow levels more natural.

In terms of color control, through independent brightness control of high-density RGB LEDs, this system can achieve vibrant and vivid performance in bright areas while preventing white clipping. In dark areas, it delicately restores light and shadow layers, preventing black crushing.

Additionally, the processing capability of this display system is approximately twice that of traditional local dimming technology. Combined with pixel correction technology, it accurately presents subtle color differences, ensuring color accuracy and avoiding color deviation.

Sony stated that the company is jointly developing a control processor with its long-term strategic partner, MediaTek. As a leading supplier of smart TV SoCs (Pentonic series), MediaTek possesses extensive technical expertise.

Additionally, Sony is collaborating with ROHM to develop LED driver ICs and has partnered with Sanan Optoelectronics to develop LED components. These partners collectively support Sony’s direction in next-generation display technology.

It is worth noting that multiple TV manufacturers are investing in RGB LED backlight technology this year. At CES 2025, Hisense launched the world’s first 116-inch RGB-Mini LED TV, claiming to feature the world’s first RGB three-dimensional color control LCD display technology and the world’s first RGB light-color synchronous control picture quality chip.

Samsung also unveiled an RGB Micro LED TV at CES 2025, stating that it is the world’s first RGB Micro LED TV, achieving the first full-gamut local dimming, the lowest power consumption, and the thinnest design for a consumer-grade display.

Furthermore, TCL previously showcased an RGB-Mini LED prototype TV. It is reported that TCL’s upcoming flagship X-series will continue to utilize its advanced partitioning technology while incorporating RGB-Mini LED technology.

(Photo credit: Sony)