BrightSide Technologies Inc. (formerly ''Sunnybrook Technologies'') was a firm spun-out from the Structured Surface

Physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

Laboratory of the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

, developing and commercializing electronic display

technologies Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

, specifically high brightness display technology called HDR. The

privately held company A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose Stock, shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in their respective listed markets. Instead, the Private equi ...

also developed technology for capturing, processing, and storage of HDR images. BrightSide's headquarters were in

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

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. It was acquired by Dolby Laboratories, Inc. in April 2007 for US$28 million. The chief executive officer of BrightSide Technologies Inc. was Richard MacKellar. The chief technology officer was Helge Seetzen, who went on to join Dolby as becoming director of HDR Technology at Dolby (2008 to 2010), before going on to found TandemLaunch, a Montreal-based technology incubator. The main electronic display technology developed by BrightSide was based on IMLED-LCD which consisted of a LCD with an array of individually modulated LED

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

s as the backlights, instead of cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL) that diffuse light in a layer of plastic. Each LED has 256 brightness steps, where step 0 switches the LED off and step 255 switches it to maximum luminance. As a result, the device can display true black and very bright white, with a contrast ratio technically of ''infinity'', where minimal luminance is 0 cd/m² (the denominator) and maximal luminance is almost 4,000 cd/m². To address the confusion that may accompany a display with a quoted contrast ratio of infinity, Brightside calculates its quoted contrast ratio using the next-darkest level available on the display to arrive at a contrast ratio of 200,000:1. BrightSide produced a prototype display to showcase their technology: the DR37-P. Targeted industries include the

medical Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...

field, CAD, film post-production, geophysical data and satellite imaging. On April 25, 2007 Dolby Laboratories, Inc. announced that it completed the acquisition of Brightside Technologies. (Dolby, the company responsible for licensing its surround-sound technologies to consumer electronics manufacturers.) Dolby renamed the BrightSide technology to Dolby Vision. In 2009, SIM2 Multimedia announced the professional version of their Solar Series display using it would be available Q2 2010 with 16 bits per color, and a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1 (19.9 stops). In 2011, Sony announced that they had acquired the license to use the Dolby Vision technology in their Bravia LCD HDTVs. In 2010 Dolby released the Dolby Professional Reference Monitor (Dolby PRM-4200), followed by the PRM-4220 in 2013. The Dolby team who developed the Dolby Professional Reference Monitor received an Oscar at the 2016 Academy Awards. Among the Dolby employees on stage to receive the award was Thomas Wan, one of the BrightSide employees who originally started working on the technology while a student at the University of British Columbia.

References

{{reflist Dolby Laboratories 2007 mergers and acquisitions Companies based in Vancouver Display technology companies Electronics companies of Canada

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References