Hewlett-Packard is readying a new color display technology that is allegedly able to deliver 1 billion colors for a life-like viewing experience. The new technology, developed in collaboration with DreamWork Animations, will be deployed across all the company's product lines.

The new display technology will play a key factor in preserving vibrant colors throughout the movie production process, as well as in printing. According to HP, the technology is a significant image quality boost from the 24-bit rendering mode (16.7 million colors per pixel) to 30-bit color display (1 billion colors per pixel).

The impressive technology is called the HP DreamColor display and was announced during the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas. Hewlett-Packard will be using one of ATI's graphics card that is able to support 30-bit rendering modes, along with a proprietary LED backlight technology, capable of delivering sharper tones of black and white.

Jeff Wood, director of product marketing at HP claimed that the new product would allow users to "see red like you have never seen before; blues and greens that just jump off the screen." Unlike other miraculous technologies that take years to hit the shelves, HP's 30-bit displays will be available early this summer.

However, Chris Chinnock, president of research firm Insight Media is skeptical in respects to the new technology's capabilities. He claims that the 30-bit displays will not be able to increase the color gamut of a display, but rather to allow a better gradation between the color levels.

"It will make the displays much more accurate in being able to display colors and grayscale properly," said Chinnock. "Whether the colors look more vibrant and saturated will depend more on the backlight technology HP uses," he continued.

Moreover, the vast majority of image and video media sources are nowadays intended to deliver 24-bit quality, which means that HP's display technology will have to be ported to the image sources also.

If source devices is not capable of capturing 30-bit images, HP's achievements would be wasted in vain, in a manner similar to listening to audio files compressed at a low bit-rate on an ultra-high-end sound system.