A display’s color temperature (a.k.a. white balance or gray scale) relates to its three primary color points: red, green and blue. These three colors combine to create all the other colors, including white and various shades of gray, we see on screen. If the output levels of these three primary colors aren’t balanced to a specific reference, other colors won’t come out right. The reference is a white image, which is made up of nearly equal amounts of red, green and blue and should measure, with a color analyzer or spectroradiometer, as a “temperature” of 6500 Kelvin. (This measurement corresponds to the color of light emitted from a black body object when it has been heated up to that temperature.) If the temperature falls below 6500 Kelvin, then the display probably has a red tint. If the temperature rises above 6500 Kelvin, then the TV will likely have a blue tinge. These are not hard-and-fast rules, though. See the CIE Diagram for more information. The color temperature can vary at different levels of intensity and is therefore measured at various levels of white or gray. These levels are described in units called IRE, after the Institute of Radio Engineers. The units are roughly comparable to a percentage. Zero IRE is black; 100 IRE is bright or 100-percent white. Ideally, the resulting graph would be a straight, flat line across the chart at the point of 6500 Kelvin. If the CIE Diagram were represented in three dimensions, the Color Temperature vs. IRE measurement data would be represented on the Z-axis.