What is contrast ratio

Contrast ratio is a technical specification which indicates the theoretical contrast you can get with your display, or projector in this story. It’s the difference between light and dark, defined as the ratio between the brightest light to that of the darkest solid black pixel your system can produce. Thus, how much brighter is the light of an all-white image compared to a solid black image? It means that a projector with a 2000:1 contrast ratio will produce its white image 2000 times brighter than the black image.

That’s on paper. But what does it mean if you look at the projected image? Well with higher contrast ratios, the projector reproduces the content with deeper black levels and shadow details. Whereas, with low contrast, blacks or dark areas appear more like grey. The higher the contrast ratio, the sharper the details and the more subtle shades you’ll be able to see. It really boasts the depth of an image and makes it easier to see/recognize objects in darker scenes. All this is especially important when working with high-resolution images and video content.

Contrast ratio is what the projector optical system itself is capable of. But some projectors now also include extra processing tools or contrast enhancing technologies to adjust contrast and brightness based on the image that’s being displayed. And then we’re talking about dynamic contrast ratios.

Dynamic contrast functions detect the visual input signal and refine the picture to deliver optimal contrast. When the content is showing a white image, the light source is beaming at full force. When the content is showing a darker image, the projector displays darker pixels, but it’ll also dim the light source to enable deeper blacks while maintaining the highlights in the image.

DynaBlack is Barco’s new frame by frame contrast enhancement feature. DynaBlack analyzes every frame on the fly and distinguish dark scenes from bright scenes.

Thanks to an internally developed smart algorithm, DynaBlack enhances the contrast ratio making darker scenes darker and brighter scenes brighter without any processing latency. With superlative black levels the quality of your content enhances incredibly and the contrast in dark images really stands out.