Why do new monitors say they can show 111% of the color gamut

Fun with color Gamuts

[lgn1]

I was at Best Buy the other day and I saw a monitor that said it could display 111% of the color gamut.

I said to myself, that can't be right. Is this monitor transmitting in the far UV and Infra Red.

After looking up color gamuts, I found these numbers are percentages of the NTSC (cira 1953) RGB color gamut, which is only a partial subset of what the eye can actually show.

The true color gamut is the CIE color gamut, which is what the average eye can see.

I guess manufactuers don't want to say that their monitor can produce 54% of the color gamut, for example.

What I couldn't find, is what percentage of the CIE color gamut, does the NTSC actually represent.

I could probably calculate this with the NTSC superimposed on the CIE gamut, and with a bit of calculus, but if anybody knows the conversion from %NTSC to %CIE (what the eye can see), this would be appreciated.

This way, I will know when they finally release a monitor with true color, or the closest thing you are going to get, taking in regard physics and production costs.

[Dabrowski]

In the UK we say NTSC stands for Never The Same Colour!