An interesting development in LCD TV technology is “dynamic contrast”. When the TV needs to display a dark image/scene, the display would drop power input to the backlight lamp, but will proportionately amplify the transmission through to the panel. This makes for much clearer and more realistic display of dark scenes – even in dark rooms.

There is one drawback though: If a dark scene contains small areas of very bright light – the image may be overexposed.

The display needs to determine how much of the highlights may be unnoticeably blown out in a given image under the ambient lighting conditions.

It is also common to market only the dynamic contrast ratio capability of a display, which should not be directly compared to the static contrast ratio.