Sharp unveils quad-pixel technology for TVs with a trillion colors

If you didn’t think your flat-panel TV could display colors properly, get ready for this. Sharp is unveiling a new technology that allows its upcoming TVs to display a trillion colors.

The quad-pixel technology sounds simple. It takes the traditional “red green blue” color pixels used to form images on a screen and then adds a new one: yellow. With these quad pixels, and with new light-emitting diode backlighting, Sharp TVs can display far more colors than existing TVs. These new TVs will ship in three series this spring in 52 inch, 60 inch and 68 inch sizes.

The rollout is fast for a technology that Sharp hasn’t revealed before. Six women walked up on staged to pull curtains off the TV sets, which do indeed look brilliant when they’re showing flowers on the screen.

Belatedly, Sharp is adding Netflix movie streaming service and other movie services to its web-connected TVs. And it is adding social networking as well. For instance, consumers can now tweet on TV too through Twitter for Sharp.