#9 Ajit Ninan of Dolby Labs

Mar 16, 2021
44 min

 
 

Episode 9 features Ajit Ninan, Vice President of Engineering at Dolby Labs and an early pioneer of everything from Full Array local dimming HDR, to Quantum Dot displays, to Augmented and Virtual Reality. In this episode, Brian and Ajit talked about the origins of Dolby Vision (did you know that it started as a 2,000 nit taillight simulator for automobiles?), melted LCD films, burning display demos in early HDR displays, introduced the critical "potted palm" display quality metric, Ray Dolby’s involvement in HDR, solving for director’s intent across a range of technologies and products, AR/VR, and more.

Links

Contents

  • 00:00​​ – Intro & Credits

  • 02:20​​ – Ajit Intro & current work at Dolby

  • 04:18​​ – Isn't Dolby an "audio" company?

  • 05:20​​ – Origins of HDR at Dolby

  • 09:42​​ – Creating Dolby Pulsar: melted diffusers and liquid cooling

  • 11:49​​ – Ray Dolby involvement in HDR?

  • 12:23​​ – Early HDR demos & burning displays(!)

  • 14:13​​ – Dolby Vision: delivering director's intent

  • 16:58​​ – Future Strategy for Dolby Vision

  • 18:22​​ – Importance of Standardization for Dolby

  • 20:48​​ – Qualifying Dolby Vision displays

  • 21:51​​ – 4,000 nit displays are impossible?

  • 25:53​​ – Ninan's Nine: top 9 most important visual quality & comfort display metrics

  • 28:37​​ – Introducing the "Potted Palm" display test

  • 30:16​​ – Future of BT.2020 color gamut: Nature is limited to Pointer's Gamut, stories are not

  • 33:56​​ – Quantum Dot movie screens + lasers?!

  • 36:23​ – AR/VR work at Dolby

  • 38:25​ – Future display technology needs: brightness and color gamut

  • 41:06​ – A 10,000 nit Quantum Dot display?!

  • 42:06​ – Who's Jeff?

  • 42:59​ – Wrap-up + Moulin Rouge?

Ajit Ninan's Bio

Among many activities, Ajit has been one of the key drivers of Dolby’s transition from an audio-only company into the world of video. He has been instrumental in Dolby’s development of high dynamic range imaging technologies, which includes HDR hardware, specifically the Pulsar 4000-nit monitor which was one of the first HDR monitors ever, and importantly, the development of Dolby Vision from its inception with a small team to where it is today. Ajit built one of the first locally-dimmed quantum dot TVs to enable delivery of HDR with wide color gamut. HIs educational background is in computer science and computer engineering. He authored the JPEG-XT documents, aka JPEG HDR, and worked on network protocols such as 802.17. I hear he has also been doing some amazing work on Augmented and Virtual Reality. He holds over 400 patents in fields related to imaging, color, video, audio, and networking. He is also a Fellow of the Society for Motion Picture and Television Engineers, or SMPTE for short, and he got the AIS Lumiere award for “Pioneering HDR in Hollywood”.

 
NanosysAjit Ninan, Brian Berekely, Dolby, Dolby Vision, Dolby Pulsar, BT.2020, Color Gamut, DCI-P3, no-image