OTHER TECH

Gaven Wang, a senior product manager at Dolby, calls the effect head-spinning. "It's almost real-life. Instead of looking at a flat picture, you feel like you're watching something real through a window." (Yeah, we've heard the window analogy a million times before too, but still . . . cool!)

Lowry is equally enthused. "The introduction of HDR sets is going to be a bigger step up from today's LCDs and plasmas than when we went from standard CRTs to HDTVs. The first time I saw that BrightSide screen - oh my heavens. It was startlingly good. The image just jumped out."

Will anyone but the most diehard videophiles really care? If people were really that keen on blacker blacks, wouldn't they have been buying plasma TVs in droves, instead of choosing the lesser quality, but considerably more popular LCDs? Wang points out that the risk of burn-in with early plasma sets - a static image left on the screen for hours that would leave a permanent ghost - steered scores of consumers toward LCD sets instead. LCD screens also tend to be brighter (if not necessarily more accurate) on the sales floor, he says, more easily winning the eye of the TV shopper. In the future, HDR TVs - which should have no burn-in issues and are considerably brighter than any set currently on the market - will win the battle for customers' attention hands-down.

Should you begin saving your pennies? Probably not, unless you're hell-bent on being among the earliest adopters (expect Dolby's first HDR sets to be pricey, though the company declined to give us exact figures). Richard MacKellar, BrightSide's former CEO, believes that TV manufacturers will stick to the tried and true business model of introducing a marginally better product once or twice annually.

"They could leap to an HDR display today," says MacKellar, "but they will make more profit by gradually improving the dynamic range by a few percent each year. In ten years the dynamic range will be vastly better than it is today, and I believe screens will be able to compete with sunlight." And all the while, prices will inch down.

Yes, Christmas 2017 could be picture-perfect.