I hope it's not a big issue if I open a topic about this here...
Portrait Displays sent out an email to announce their new C7 HDR probe. It's currently pre-order only, so probably nobody knows how good (or bad) it actually is. By the looks of it, it's not a rebrand of some existing device I have seen before (although it might pop up sooner or later under a different, generic brand as well).
I wonder why they use such a small lens (even the i1d3 can measure handheld device screens with its relatively big optics).
The official specs promise a 0.002-10`000 nit usable luminance range and I think their marketing text indicates it utilizes spectral sensitivity correlation files like the X-Rite/Calibrate i1d3 probes. Since the HDR variants of the i1d3 probes seem to sacrifice low-light precision and this unit promises decent low-light precision, I am somewhat interested.
Is there a chance this probe or its possibly upcoming generic-brand sibling(s) might get ColourSpace support?

It's very unlikely the C7 will be available for any other calibration systems as it is Portrait specific hardware, limited to Calman operation.
(Why anyone would accept such a limitation, and buy hardware restricted to working with a single software program is beyond me...)
I guess operation could be reverse engineered, but its unlikely it would worth the time/effort...

And the specification really doesn't look that good.

The specs state +/- 10% accuracy at 0.002 nits, for a 16 Second exposure.
With ColourSpace's Intelligent Integration that's basically the same as the i1D3, although a +/- 10% accuracy is not really that good.

More worryingly, an xy accuracy +/- 0.001 @ 1 nit suggests the colour accuracy is not good at low-light levels, so being able to read lower than 1 nit looks to be inaccurate for colour, which is rather critical.

And as it has a minimum read time of over a 1/4 second, it is rather slow...
The i1D3 minimum read time is half that (140ms).
And being slow will likely make it unsuitable for large patch set profiling, as it will cause issues with displays that suffer heating, etc., when patches are on-screen for extended periods.

And yes, the optics are very small - and that is never good for accuracy...
It means you re not reading a decent patch size – probably why it is slow.

And as the 'Probe Match' files (what they are calling Spectral Matrix Corrections) are on-probe, that means you can't use FCVM or Bodner, as the probe can only do basic correction due to processing limitations...
And yes, they are basically the same as the Correlation files for the i1D3 used with ColourSpace, but obviously ColourSpace Correlation Files are off-probe, and fully unlimited.

And the formfactor is not appealing, making the build look rather cheap...

However, all the above is speculation, based on the available specifications, and only true testing will reveal the actual capabilities/limitations.
We are not holding our breath.

Steve

The idea of "pre-ordering" (really the same as ordering: placing an order of something that's not in stock) a piece of hardware boggles my mind. You'd have to have money to spare that you don't care about losing to want to do that. Personally I'd want to have a lot more answers, including reviews, before I went near any hardware.
The fact that it's stated to only ever work with Calman would be too restrictive anyway. imagine buying a car that only worked with one brand of fuel.

Thanks for the replies. Their email was much vaguer about the details than what I later found on their website. (My AdBlocker messed up their Store page. I later found the full text copied over to a forum post on AVSForum and then checked their Store page with a different browser.) So the photos of the lens and their official notes about low-light capabilities together strongly indicate that this probe most probably won't be any better than any i1d3 variant. Not much of a surprise. I just got curious after reading their email. (I thought they *might* use improved sensors and/or implement the "black current compensation" that X-Rite planned to do with their i1d3 Rev.B, etc.)

If their probe's capabilities are roughly equal to the i1d3 then locking it down software-wise makes even less sense. Sacrificing potential profit from hardware sales on the altar of potentially boosting software sales would only make sense to me if they sold the hardware at a low profit margin (and by doing so, be able to offer a better price/performance ratio on the hardware and luring people in to buy the hardware+software combo at a perceived high overall price/performance ratio). But being close to the i1d3 both in price and quality suggests they aren't giving away the hardware at a low profit margin (or they didn't cut a great deal with the OEM). Only in that case it would be a great candidate for reverse-engineering and taking advantage of the relatively high price/performance ratio of the hardware.
So, in light of all the available information (there is no "miracle" here), this probe simply makes no rational sense to me from any viewpoints (not even from Portrait's viewpoint). They just re-invented a same-ish wheel and offered it at a same-ish price while it fit their car only. This only makes sense from the perspective of a brand that assumes its potential buyers are "not so bright".

By the way, my i1d3p Rev.B (2000 nit) seems to be good for only >=1.5 nit in terms of gray-scale chromaticity when Int.Int. is set to 2.0 in AIO mode with default 0.75 Int. time (Int.Int. 1.0 is a bit loose for it and only provides meaningful-looking chromaticity values down to ~2.0 nit). That means the optimal sampling resolution with this probe is probably 15^3 rather than the widely suggested 17^3 (at least in terms of FullRange RGB where 3,5,15,17 values result in evenly distributed 8-bit integer values). That might be somewhat sub-optimal for 33^3 3DLUT generation (because the sampling and control points aren't "in phase", although, since most of the display model is probably smoothed/filtered interpolation/extrapolation anyway regardless of the original sampling point locations, that might not be important at all). And I guess ColourSpace saves the actual, rounded/truncated values in the profile (what the actual RGB triplet output ended up to be for 8/10/12bit) when the user selects arbitrary sampling resolutions (like 10^3 cube where even stepping with 8 or 10-bit integers isn't possible for FullRange RGB).

If you are only getting viable reading for any i1d3 over 1.5 nits there is likely something wrong with your probe...
Or your display just has poor colour in the near blacks.

And the cube size has nothing to do with 'optimal' profiling.
Same with Full range vs. any other range, as that is also meaningless.
Also, LUT generation size has no link to the profile size.
You can see all this when you use non-cube based profiles.

And being 'in phase' is a meaningless phrase, as you guess.
(But not for the reasons you suggest.)
And your comments on rounded/truncated values are also inaccurate - and you can see the saved values in the profile data.
(Open the .bcs file with Notepad, or similar.)

Steve

Well, that was short-lived...
It seems from rumours within the company that the results form the small/cheap sensor used were so bad the probe was unviable.
It has been cancelled, and will not be made available.


Complete with spelling error...

Steve

They shouldn't have taken anyone's money until the date it was shipped anyway, so they oughtn't have to refund anyone!

mrtickleuk
Perhaps they were using preorders to fund the purchase from the manufacturer and didn't get the required minimum number of orders. Crappy way to do business, but given their track record, perhaps it's not out of the realm of possibilities.