On March 14, Sony officially released its next-generation RGB LED backlighting technology system, capable of achieving a peak brightness of 4,000 nits. Sony plans to begin mass production of the system in 2025 and launch the first commercial product equipped with this technology at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2026.
Image source: Sony
It is understood that Sony launched the world's first LCD TV with full-array RGB LED backlighting as early as 2004. Since then, Sony has continuously improved the precision of backlight control and conducted in-depth research on the characteristics of LED components.
Sony's new generation RGB LED backlighting system achieves wide color gamut performance for the display through independently driven RGB LEDs. Independent color emission ensures high color purity, enabling the display to cover more than 99% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and meet approximately 90% of the ITU-R BT.2020² standard.
Traditional LED backlighting and RGB-LED
Furthermore, the system features dynamic power allocation for RGB channels, intelligently adjusting the light source distribution according to specific scenes. Unlike traditional high-brightness TVs that only enhance the brightness of bright elements like stars or the moon in night scenes, Sony's technology harmonizes brightness adjustment with color gradation. Simultaneously, the system achieves a peak brightness exceeding 4000 cd/m².
In addition, the display system uses 96-bit high bit rate signal processing, which has high-speed and high-precision signal processing capabilities. It can not only present deeper blacks and brighter whites at the same time, but also delicately reproduce the changes in brightness and darkness in the picture containing a lot of mid-tones, making the light and shadow layers more natural.
Color volume comparison of OLED, LED and RGB-LED
In terms of color control, by independently controlling the brightness of high-density RGB LEDs, the system can achieve vivid and lifelike performance in bright areas while avoiding white clipping; in dark areas, it can delicately reproduce light and shadow levels and prevent black crushing. In addition, the processing power of this display system is about twice that of traditional local dimming technology, and combined with pixel correction technology, it can accurately present subtle color differences, ensuring color accuracy and avoiding color cast.
Sony stated that it is collaborating with its long-term strategic partner MediaTek to develop a control processor. MediaTek, a leading supplier of smart TV SoCs (Pentonic series), possesses extensive technical experience. In addition, Sony is collaborating with ROHM to develop LED driver ICs and with Sanan Optoelectronics to jointly develop LED components. These partners collectively support Sony's development direction in next-generation display technologies.
It's worth noting that many TV manufacturers are investing heavily in RGB LED backlighting technology this year. At CES 2025, Hisense unveiled the world's first 116-inch RGB-Mini LED TV, boasting the world's first RGB three-dimensional color control LCD display technology and the world's first RGB light and color simultaneous control image quality chip. Star also launched an RGB Micro LED TV at CES 2025, claiming it to be the world's first RGB Micro LED TV, achieving the first full-color gamut local dimming, lowest power consumption, and thinnest design among consumer-grade displays.
In addition, TCL had previously showcased an RGB-Mini LED prototype TV. It is understood that TCL's upcoming flagship X series will continue to utilize local color gamut technology and introduce RGB-Mini LED technology.
