Monitors for the color blind

Samsung is going to release monitors that are specifically supposed to adjust for those who are color-blind.  As someone with color-blindness, I find this fantastic, although I'm still skeptical about how this is going to work.  The article mentions being able to increase color levels within 10 levels.  This will of course do nothing for those who have the type of color-blindness where they do not see color at all, but unlike the common misconception, that type of color-blindness is rare.  Much more common are types that involve simply not seeing certain colors as vividly, like red and green.  This is the type I have, and effectively it means that what a normal eye is able to distinguish shades that are too subtle for my eye.  So greenish-browns or brownish greens all look like Green/Brown.  Or very blue purples may just look blue.

I talked about this a bit before and envisioned a day where some kind of contact lense or electronic filter converted the images so that the colors which my eyes are not as sensitive to would be pumped up.  Although that would still be a lot more powerful rather than a monitor, this theoretically will at least allow those of us who have this condition (and there are millions) to be able to guage what others are seeing.  Theoretically they might even be able to rig this up so that you had glasses which recorded live images which then would be fed into small LCD's that you where as glasses, to get a kind of live image of what others see.  But even if this was built and you could afford it, my sense is that it would have so many other disadvantages to real vision that it wouldn't be viable.  

This brings my mind to a bit more philosophical a realm.  Really, I have no problem with how I see colors.  I can still be awed by the beauty of a colorful sky, I still have very definite preferences in what colors I like for clothing, interior paint, etc.  And even if this new monitor does actually help in getting my site to be more "normal" (I'm still not sure technically how they are going to be determining whether I'm seeing colors as the "should" be), I still think that these "corrected" images will look "wrong" to my eyes.  They will seem odd at the very least, since I've been seeing duller colors my whole life.  If I do somehow get used to these new more vibrant colors on the monitor, will I then recognize how dull my regular vision is?  Will it then feel like odd and constrained in real life because I don't have the benefit of "true" color? 
The other issue I see is that all monitors generally have color shifts.  If you want to see accurate colors on your monitor you have to use a color correction device.  This is used by photographers who are serious about having accurate colors in their images.  When you take a digital photo, a setting called "white balance" controls the color.  The camera can guess, but in general it's sometimes a bit tricky to get precise color accuracy without something like a white card.  If your monitor is displaying colors inaccurately, this means that it's going to be all the harder to get accurate colors.  CRT Monitors are the best for this because their color shifts take longer.  LCD's generally have poor accuracy and even after calibrating them correctly can become inaccurate again pretty quickly.  Lacie has talked about a more accurate LCD for this type of application, but unless Samsung does something similar about color shift, adding the color compensation for those with colorblindness I fear is going to make the matter all the more muddled! 

It's an interesting dilemma, but one I'm willing to test out, since it doesn't require any surgery!  Although who knows what kind of premium Samsung will charge for this feature?  Hopefully not a prohibitive one…

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