HDMI Spec Upgraded To Support 'Deep Color'

writertype writes "If you own a digital television, there's a good chance it supports HDMI as an A/V interface. Well, for all you early adopters who bought an HDMI-less TV and regretted it later, the HDMI spec has been upgraded yet again, to version 1.3. Features include "deep color", or color depths beyond what the human eye can perceive, eight-channel audio support, among others. Interesting note: the PlayStation 3 supports deep color, according to the HDMI chief."

Comments

I only care about ONE deep color

[reklusband]

Does it support Deep Purple? Inna gadda davida baby! 8 CHANNELS AND DEEP PURPLE!!!!

Re:I only care about ONE deep color

[kinthalas]

Iron Butterfly did In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Deep Purple did Smoke on the Water.

Nice try, though.

Re:I only care about ONE deep color

[Tau Neutrino]

Not to be horribly picky, but Deep Purple's main claim to fame was 'Smoke on the Water.'

'Inna Gadda Davida' was from Iron Butterfly.

Re:I only care about ONE deep color

[mbadolato]

Does it support Deep Purple? Inna gadda davida baby!

That would display incorrectly; Ina Gadda Da Vida was done by Iron Butterfly, not Deep Purple.

Re:I only care about ONE deep color

[reklusband]

Yeah, but I don't like religion, and I don't like smoking on water (the stuff gets soggy). Deep purple wrote INAGADDA DAVINCI in my world. We all came out to davinci, blah blah blah DEEP PURPLE, FIRE IN THE SKY...INAGADDA INAGADDA INAGADDA DAVINCI!!! I have no problem rewriting reality so that my post is accurate. Don't think I won't.

Re:I only care about ONE deep color

[AuMatar]

I always prefered Woman from Tokyo.

Re:I only care about ONE deep color

[HTH NE1]

Does it support sand storms and DEEP HURTING?

Re:I only care about ONE deep color

[Hawthorne01]

And neither one of them have enough cowbell.

Re:I only care about ONE deep color

[Anonymous Coward]

You're so confused. Even if you were completely stoned all the time, anyone who lived through the 60's knows that 'Inna gadda davida' is from the first Iron Butterfly album, 'Heavy' in 1968 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Butterfly, and Deep Purple was the band that had a hit in 1971 called 'Smoke on the Water' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_on_the_Water.

Or maybe you had too much Purple Haze http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Haze...

Re:I only care about ONE deep color

[Anonymous Coward]

We can all see that you're thoroughly embarrassed by your snafu, but at least try not to make yourself look like any more of a jackass than you really must.

Re:I only care about ONE deep color

[gujo-odori]

Me too, and Highway Star. It's hard to keep your foot off the floor when that's on your car stereo. Well, here in the greater LA area it's not, b/c you're in gridlock all the time anyway, but I hear it's hard to do that in some places :-p

And what, you may ask (or not) was Iron Butterfly really trying to say? The answer, my friends, is not blowin' in the wind. The answer is "In the Garden of Eden, baby, don't you know that I love you?" but in a stunning tour de force of out-morrisoning Jim Morrison, it came out as "innagaddadavida" and the name stuck.

Licenced colors

[Volante3192]

Unfortunatly, due to unforseen copyright issues, all colors between Deep Green and Deep Violent will be subjected to a licencing fee.

IBM was unreachable for comment.

Re:Licenced colors

[Sponge Bath]

... and Deep Violent

This would sharpen you up and make you
ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.

Re:Licenced colors

[Jugalator]

Hmm... Hues of blue are inbetween those two in the spectrum.
The Hooloovoo, super-intelligent shades of the color blue, will sue the ass out of the copyright holder on this one for sure.

Re:Licenced colors

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the whole point of supporting colors the human eye cannot perceive is for use in EULAs and new variations on the concept of 'fine print'. Welcome to America =(

Huh?

[sexyrexy]

Sorry for stating the obvious, but doesn't color depths beyond what the human eye can perceive just seem really... pointless? I don't think the human eye is going to evolve to greater color sensitivity during HDMI's lifetime. It's one thing to have a higher quality image to downsample to, but... seriously. Isn't there SOMETHING the bandwidth could be used for besides information we can't use?

Re:Huh?

[compro01]

Sorry for stating the obvious, but doesn't color depths beyond what the human eye can perceive just seem really... pointless? I don't think the human eye is going to evolve to greater color sensitivity during HDMI's lifetime. It's one thing to have a higher quality image to downsample to, but... seriously. Isn't there SOMETHING the bandwidth could be used for besides information we can't use?

i'd have to agree with that. allowing audio that is above or below human hearing has a purpose, as you can feel extremely deep tones, but colour is only visual, so there is no other sense to fall back on.

Re:Huh?

[statemachine]

I figured someone would be confused by this. However, the article expains:
"The color bit depth [of today's displays] is typically 24-bits RGB - that gets you 16 million colors, and the human eye can distinguish that," Chard said. "That leads to scaling and onscreen effects which you can pick up. Either 36-bit or 48-bit RGB is beyond the ability of the human eye to distinguish."

Right now your eye can see the color transitions. The point is to make it so you can't see the transitions.

Re:Huh?

[pthisis]

With current color depths, you can distinguish the difference between adjacent colors (in some limited portions of the field). By taking it to a depth where differences are imperceptible, you make things look smoother.

Essentially you want to have your colors go as deep as you need to to make differences imperceptible, which this (supposedly) does. After that going even deeper would be a waste.

Re:Huh?

[neonprimetime]

I bet ya the companies wish they could shake the hand of the scientist who wrote the paper / proof showing that there are more colors than the human eye can see! Thus, they have another feature to push for their product ... there are so many colors in this TV that you can't even see them all!!!!!

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the 8 or 10 bit color depth of current HDMI occurs when the eye s of the observer get dark adapted e.g. when watching a very dark sequence in a movie. If this happens, the full resolution of the eye needs to be covered by only a fraction of the resolution of the HDMI signal. Additionally, an increased resolution leaves some more bits after scaling or color/brightness/contrast changes that don't have to be rounded on the source.

Re:Huh?

[daniel422]

It also has to do with ease and accuracy of scaling. Scaling 24 bit requires more bits than that to accomplish without errors. If you go to higher source bit amounts any degredation will still be beyond what is visible, hence no visible scaling artifacts in the color area.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm? how bout ...i dont know... BLOCKING THE BLOODY TRANSITIONS so we cant see them if we're not supposed to ?
does anyone over at HDMI have a brain ?

Re:Huh?

[EvanED]

Maybe, or maybe not. There's a couple possibilities in here. The article isn't specific enough to say if either of these are true, so these are just guesses.

First, consider storing each channel in 8 bits. That gives 256 possible levels. Say our eyes can distinguish 400 levels. 8 bits isn't enough then, so you need 9 bits. But that gives 512 levels, beyond our level of perception. But you can't use 8 1/2 bits for each channel (at least without more complicated encoding).

Second, say it was easier for some technical reason to use 12 bits per channel instead of 9. It might be worth it to use those 12 bits if it would simplify the hardware.

Third, it might simplify some software stuff. Photoshop CS 2 has a feature called HDR for high dynamic range images. Basically if you take three to five photos from the same position but exposed differently it will combine them into a single image with 36 bits per channel. In this Adobe might have either used or created a defacto standard for deep colors.

Fourth, it might be not MUCH over, so if you get a really eyesight-gifted person they might actually be able to distingush colors.

Re:Huh?

[MBCook]

The best example of this is a gradient. Take your monitor and make a gradient that is full screen from solid red to solid black. As things are now you get 256 bands of color because there are 256 possible values for red. The problem with this is that the transitions are VERY obvious.

Now if you have 4090 possible values of red, your eye may not be able to perceive the difference between #1024 and #1032 individually. But when you make that large gradient while you will not be able to see the individual bands.

You've gone from blocky to smooth. Anywhere you want a gradient, this is good. Fading to black, the sky, etc. And let's not forget that this can give us better HDR.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way you "BLOCK" the color "TRANSITIONS" would be to have the screen only display full screens of the same color. A lot of VCRs do this when idling, and it's pretty boring to watch.

Re:Huh?

[LordRPI]

It's one thing to have a higher quality image to downsample to, but... seriously. Isn't there SOMETHING the bandwidth could be used for besides information we can't use?

It gives extra information for subliminal messaging.

Re:Huh?

[EvanED]

BTW, I don't mean to suggest that the 400 number is correct; it's WAY too low. I'm just using it for illustration.

Also,

Fifth, you want your cat to enjoy TV more.

Re:Huh?

[cnettel]

In addition to what's already been mentioned by everybody else, this can both be used to increase the granularity of the scale and increase the dynamic range. If you want to crank up to change contrast/brightness on your display, it's good if your display is not being fed a "cropped" signal as input for that transformation.

Re:Huh?

[IKillYou]

So what do you suggest, using 30-bit RGB? This isn't really a bandwidth issue. It is an encoding issue. From TFA:

The ITU 601 standard, which governs today's displays, allows only 60 to 80 percent of the available colors, even if the display can support more, Chard said. "The color bit depth [of today's displays] is typically 24-bits RGB - that gets you 16 million colors, and the human eye can distinguish that," Chard said. "That leads to scaling and onscreen effects which you can pick up. Either 36-bit or 48-bit RGB is beyond the ability of the human eye to distinguish."

So in other words, it is necessary to move up to the higher bit depths in order to completely cover the range of colors that the eye can see, but there is necessarily some overkill involved if we don't want to commit to some funky encodings. It may be that something like 10 bits per channel would more closely match the eye's sensitivity, but it's rather more convenient to encode on byte-boundaries.

Re:Huh?

[Mindwarp]

Sorry for stating the obvious, but doesn't color depths beyond what the human eye can perceive just seem really... pointless?

They're planning for the point where every human on the planet owns an HDMI television and they have to start marketing to insects instead.

Re:Huh?

[bill_mcgonigle]

It's one thing to have a higher quality image to downsample to, but... seriously.

That's likely the point. As it is you can cover the whole range, but if you start adjusting the color balance or white balance on the display you're going to throw out some bits and be looking for some more. If you've ever fiddled with the curves in Photoshop in 8 and 16 bit modes and then looked at the histograms you'll know what I mean.

Re:Huh?

[c0l0]

Isn't there SOMETHING the bandwidth could be used for besides information we can't use?

Sounds like a great idea! What about meta-data for, say, totally crippling copy-protection schemes?

Oh, wait...

Re:Huh?

[Goaway]

Good job going for the obvious bait dangled in front of you by the article writer.

Re:Huh?

[hurfy]

"Fifth, you want your cat to enjoy TV more."

Awww, see now i can convince the Significant Other to let me get the new TV :)

Thanks

Re:Huh?

[JDevers]

I can see it now "On Monday, October 13th don't miss the premiere of "Flowers!" filmed in our proprietary ultraviolet format!

---while watching "Flowers!" with a UV equipped television, remember to wear sunscreen and sit at least eight feet away from the screen or risk sunburn"

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also if you STORE values of difference smaller than are distinguishable, when it comes time to process those values (in a filtering algorithm for instance), you'll get a better result.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about pets? Your dog wants deeper shades of black & white.

Re:Huh?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

You can't see the colors beyond human perception, but the growth of your penis that devices made to this new spec will cause is also beyond human perception, at least if you're wearing pants. What matters is that you can stick your hand in your pocket, and *you* know that it's there. That's all you need.

Re:Huh?

[penguinstorm]

Just you wait mister. My bionic eyeballs are already growing in a petri dish at the back of a noodle house.

Re:Huh?

[amigabill]

Where do you think they're going to hide the watermarks for copy protetion and/or tracking pirate rips to their source? The best place, considering the common user/casual pirate, is directly in front of them where they can't see it. The pros will find a way around it, they always do, but Jimbob ain't gonna be sharing his new DVD over the internet without someone tracking it back to him somehow.

Re:Huh?

[wingbat]

You're shortsightedly ignoring the long term benefits... How are we ever supposed to evolve beyond our current levels of perception unless our primary visual input encourages deeper color depth as a positive survival trait?

Re:Huh?

[MythoBeast]

This is the same as the frame rate of the human eye. We can see around 16 frames per second, and anything below or near this is perceived as flickering. By bumping it up to 24 or 30 (film and video, respectively) we can produce an image that has smooth motion to it. They're doing the same thing with color, now.

Re:Huh?

[blincoln]

and increase the dynamic range.

Dynamic range is the critical part, IMO. Existing display standards are crap in terms of reproducing the full range of colours we can see, because no matter how well you calibrate the monitor, the colour depth itself prevents them from being displayed. IIRC, green suffers the most, but all colours are affected to some degree.

Re:Huh?

[Bruce Allen]

Classic marketing speak - remember that Video CDs were supposed to be "beyond the quality of VHS" (but weren't). And a 192kbps-compressed MP3 was "CD-quality" (but wasn't).

If you want to make something that is actually giving you all of the colors the eye can see, you have to promote it as giving you more than that - so "beyond the human eye" fits the bill.

Also, bear in mind that: 1) these TVs will have some kind of stupid CineUltraVividNightVisionEnhancement chip in them to "enhance" the colors. These will actually totally screw up the colors, so in order to get something halfway decent, you need to feed the TV with a signal several orders of magnitude better than what the human eye can see.

2) TVs are currently really limited in terms of contrast ratio. Look at bright white on a TV or a computer monitor, then look at a light bulb (or *gasp* outside). Brighter, right? Wouldn't it be great if we could describe those colors and TVs could reproduce them?

Ah well, I just want a nicer canvas to work with. I am just a simple music video director.

Bruce Allen

Re:Huh?

[fossa]

I don't know if HDMI is using RGB or not, but it's worth noting that RGB wastes bits in places the eye won't notice leaving fewer bits for places where it wil notice. See Greg Ward's page, High Dynamic Range Image Encodings

which discusses perceivable color differences in the context of HDR encodings.

Re:Huh?

[Lectrik]

Sorry for stating the obvious, but doesn't color depths beyond what the human eye can perceive just seem really... pointless? I don't think the human eye is going to evolve to greater color sensitivity during HDMI's lifetime. It's one thing to have a higher quality image to downsample to, but... seriously. Isn't there SOMETHING the bandwidth could be used for besides information we can't use?

This just in, the HDMI spec will be upgraded again, and will now be using all that extra usless color space for encryption.
Also this version of HDMI will also not be compatable with any earlier version (at either end of the cable) to prevent the pirating of the signal

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

After that going even deeper would be a waste.

Not really. This article explains a bit more.

Re:Huh?

[DSP_Geek]

According to TFA, the new HDMI seems to use xvYCC, which appears to be closely related to the scYCC discussed with faint praise by Ward in the aforementioned article. It's a limited dynamic range colourspace subject to weird saturation artifacts, but it's blessed by the IEC so it's a by-God standard even if it's crap.

Meanwhile ATI and nVidia already support the much superior EXR, but since Sony (*spit*) has already built the inferior standard into the PS3 then the rest of the world must fall into line.

Y'know, I can remember when the name "Sony" didn't stand for "fucked up junk".

Re:Huh?

[unitron]

"i'd have to agree with that. allowing audio that is above or below human hearing has a purpose, as you can feel extremely deep tones, but colour is only visual, so there is no other sense to fall back on."

Well, the infrared will make you feel nice and toasty, and the ultraviolet will let you work on your tan without going outdoors. :-)

Re:Huh?

[swillden]

Take your monitor and make a gradient that is full screen from solid red to solid black. As things are now you get 256 bands of color because there are 256 possible values for red. The problem with this is that the transitions are VERY obvious.

Actually, they're not that obvious at all across a 1200 pixel-wide image on my screen. However, knowing that the eye is more sensitive to green shades than red or blue, I tried the same experiment with a gradient from (0,0,0) to (0,255,0) and the steps are clearly visible. If you try this with the GIMP, BTW, make sure to turn "dithering" and "adaptive supersampling" off. By default the GIMP's gradient algorithm tries hard to make sure the gradient looks smooth.

Re:Huh?

[mwvdlee]

The human eye can typically distinguish between colors somewhere in 11 to 12 bit color depth per channel (for most humans, 11 bit per channel is all they can distinguish).
Current 24-bit RGB is 8 bit per channel, 36-bit is 12 bit per channel, which should be enough for even the best eyes.
48-bit RGB as used in graphics applications is overkill for simple image viewing but primarily exists because image processing generally reduces color resolution in the long run (actually, PS uses just (2^15)+1) colors per channel instead of 2^16).

Re:Huh?

[pr0nbot]

Isn't there SOMETHING the bandwidth could be used for besides information we can't use?

I've never understood why we don't go for higher frame rates. Watching a fast scene turn into a blur is annoying. It can be mitigated with short aperture (so that each frame is captured quickly, i.e. not blurry -- I seem to remember Blackhawk Down was like this, and Band of Brothers), but really, if you're updating video standards, why not up the frame rate?

Re:Huh?

[Haeleth]

Actually, even 30 fps only looks smooth because of motion blur. That's why computer games (which traditionally have not featured motion blur) don't start to look smooth until around 60 fps, and some people can tell the difference right up to about 120 fps or so.

Re:Huh?

[poot_rootbeer]

It may be that something like 10 bits per channel would more closely match the eye's sensitivity, but it's rather more convenient to encode on byte-boundaries.

MARGINALLY more convenient, perhaps.

Before the days of 24-bit color, we encoded RGB colorspace across byte boundaries and we liked it, by gum! 16 = 5+6+5, and you never heard anyone complaining!

It's really only performing color arithmetic in the ALU that would benefit from having byte-aligned color values -- one less shift instruction to execute per calculation. (Of course, since most CPUs read the values as 32-bit words these days, there will be shifts anyway to extract specific color fields.)

The GPU and output DAC can be designed to extract values from the bitfield in any combination necessary, so it's not an issue there.

Re:Huh?

[vistic]

"Take your monitor and make a gradient that is full screen from solid red to solid black. As things are now you get 256 bands of color because there are 256 possible values for red. The problem with this is that the transitions are VERY obvious."

I have a 2.0" monitor, you insensitive clod!

Re:Huh?

[MythoBeast]

This is also because the eye's frame rate increases when we're under stress. What might seem smooth while we're relaxed in front of a television becomes choppy and jumpy when we're being shot at for the hundredth time and we're simultaneously trying to spot our next target, a good place to hide, and whatever's around that next corner.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. No material is recorded using that high of color depth.

2. No evidence is provided to support the claim 24-bits is not sufficient.

3. The human eye can see about 7 million colors.

Re:Huh?

[MarkCollette]

We can already address that issue with dithering, instead of making some new incompatible standard.

Re:Huh?

[dargaud]

Take your monitor and make a gradient that is full screen from solid red to solid black. As things are now you get 256 bands of color because there are 256 possible values for red. The problem with this is that the transitions are VERY obvious.

Not quite. If you try it you won't see the transitions. But if you apply some kind of histogram-modifying filter to the result, then, yes, you'll see the banding because of truncation of the byte values. In other words, you had 256 values, you now have half that. Problem avoided with 16 bit/channel colors.

Re:Huh?

[jackbird]

Not temporally. The banding in rack focus/defocus effects in 8 BPC color video is generally atrocious.

Re:Huh?

[MarkCollette]

Most effects done on downsampled video suck. Oh yeah, and with most video being MPEG2 compressed, and dithering really only serving to mess of DCT compression, I should doubly take back that dithering idea.

What a surpise!

[neonprimetime]

According to Chard, a few early adopters should announce products soon, Chard said, with "lots of products by the end of the year," in time for Christmas, he said.

You mean companies will create buzz right before Xmas in order to get consumers to buy a product they "must have" but don't need? Wow!

wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

lets all have 3 cheers for HDMI 1.3. now maybe they can support gamma rays and X rays which we cant see either. full spectrum support! now for hdmi 1.4.

You're confused

[93,000]

You're confused. The song you're talking about is done by that religion guy, I. Ron Butterfly.

Bad video games. Bad!

[Volante3192]

Geeze, there's a case for video games adversely affecting the mind... Even with the preview button I missed that typo. It's Violet. VIOLET!!

How can they tell it works?

[sehlat]

"Color depths beyond what the human eye can perceive." Whoopie! Somebody get my retina upgrades at once!

Re:How can they tell it works?

[Ant P.]

Does this mean that if I shove nails into my eyes I'll only ever need 8-bit colour? Great, higher framerates all around!

So?

[SeXy_Red]

What is the advantage of having a standard that supports colors the human eye can not see?

Re:So?

[DragonWriter]

What is the advantage of having a standard that supports colors the human eye can not see?

Maybe the HDMI group is positioning themselves to be the first to welcome our color-perception-advantaged alien overlords?

beyond what the human eye can see?

[bunions]

so what are we talking about here? infrared? ultraviolet? microwaves?

Re:beyond what the human eye can see?

[one-eye-johnson]

The HDMI spec now supports microwaves. If you're suspected by the MPAA of watching pirated films your TV just cooks you as you sit.

Re:beyond what the human eye can see?

[kalirion]

I'm rooting for gamma.

Re:beyond what the human eye can see?

[bunions]

finally, a real reason to upgrade!

Re:beyond what the human eye can see?

[EvanED]

It doesn't increase the range of values that can be represented probably, just the resolution. (I don't mean resolution in the 1080p sense, but the bit depth of each pixel. E.G. the 24-bit part of 24-bit, 48 kHz.) It decreases the difference in between successive levels of each color.

Re:beyond what the human eye can see?

[ShyGuy91284]

Blu-Rays of course. Isn't that obvious?

Re:beyond what the human eye can see?

[NerdENerd]

No we are not talking about changing which part of the spectrum, just a greater range in the spectrum. Look at any smooth gradient on a current panel, if you can't see the color banding then you have below average color vision. 24 bit color gives us 256 shades of red green and blue to mix together, that makes 16.8 million colors, about 75% of the visible spectrum. 48 bit color gives us 262000 shades of red green and blue to mix together. That gives us enough color to get rid of the banding.

Re:beyond what the human eye can see?

[chochos]

really? doesn't it give us 65536 shades of each color (16 bits per color)?

Re:beyond what the human eye can see?

[dextromulous]

Ok, maybe my morning coffee hasn't kicked in yet, but something seems askew here. Video is not sampled at 48kHz, that is more typical of audio. If you look at the HDMI spec, it says: "Video pixel rates can range from 25MHz to 165MHz" or lower than 25MHz using a repetition scheme. According to the 1.2a spec, it is 24 bits per pixel though. 8 bits per TMDS channel, and there are three channels.

Also, I think by "resolution" you are referring to something along the lines of granularity :-)

Re:beyond what the human eye can see?

[EvanED]

Video is not sampled at 48kHz, that is more typical of audio.

Yeah. The 24-bit, 48 kHZ is DVD audio; I brought it up as an analogy. In some sense the bit depth is the same idea in each instance 24-bit in audio, now up to 48-bit per pixel in HDMI; both describe how much data is used to represent each point in time. With HDMI you have to add an additional factor of the number of pixels though, and that has no analog in audio.

(And in some sense the sample rate of audio is analogous to the frame rate of video, though they are vastly different values.)

Sorry, I should have made it clear that I was talking about audio there. Some things that make sense when you're typing them out don't make sense to other people because you don't write everything you're thinking down.

Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's hoping HDMI 1.4 will support the tasting of these invisible colors. Perhaps red would taste like cherry and purple could be cotton-candy? HDMI 1.5 could forcefully kick you in the gonads when inserting a non-DRM disc into the drive; 1.6 would saturate your eyes with pepper-spray.

This just in:

[Anonymous Coward]

HDMI is still a trap.

At last!

[ureshii_akuma]

I can finally own a TV that shows Octarine!

Re:At last!

[Elder Entropist]

I'm a bit concerned they'll accidently reproduce a Hooloovoo, which would probably make all sorts of mischief in my living room...

Upgraded...

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

So how do I flash the firmware on my TV and DVD player?

Re:Upgraded...

[Xugumad]

You're marked as funny, but my TV has upgradable firmware... ...not that I'm saying that's a good thing...

Hidden Agenda

[eclectro]

If the media you are playing is not Approved Media (TM), it plays in shallow color, otherwise known as black and white.

I know some Vrusk who will be interested in this.

[mmell]

Their vision extends somewhat into the UV, IIRC.

Will this be available on the Vrusk homeworld?

Wait a minute!

[spun]

This sounds like rock and/or roll!

wow

[ikejam]

better get those UV filtered sunglasses out next time you're watching soccer..

Re:Bad video games. Bad!

[B1]

In fact many parents don't even let their children play violet video games, for fear that the games might adversely affect their children's minds.

Well, the idea is.

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea is, you have two choices.

You can go with color depths beyond what the human eye can perceive.

or you can go with color depths less than what the human eye can perceive.

You can't go directly to the limit of what the human eye can perceive and stop there, because color perception varies from individual to individual.

So, given that our choices are to either underachieve or overachive. Can you see why the latter might be preferable?

"Upgrades" ... yeah right

[epp_b]

Honestly, I don't beleive any news on so-called "upgrades" to high definition video technology these days. If it's been "upgraded", it's because the MPAA is continuing it's quest to block users from storing content in their brains. We'd have had this in 2001 if it weren't for the greedy pond scum running corporations like these.

Grue and Bleen

[spun]

The new spec lets you see the difference between green and grue, and also between blue and bleen. Riddle of Induction solved!

Re:Grue and Bleen

[masterzora]

It still does it matter. It is still pitch black. You are still likely to be eaten by a grue.

Re:Grue and Bleen

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm maybe that's where Bleem! came from

Re:Bad video games. Bad!

[EnderGT]

Where's a moderator point when you need one... I'd mod this whole thread funny if I could...

Hey, can I heat my home with this?

[mmell]

After all, if there's a fire on TV, a lot of the energy involved is in the IR spectrum - that's radiant heat.

Re:Sony PS3 Strategy Becoming Clear

[Anonymous Coward]

This post definitely NOT brought to you by Sony[TM]. Nope, definitely not, not a trace of Sony[TM] marketing money involved in the least.
Yup, completely Sony[TM] free...

The other reason...

[hummassa]

is that watermarking becomes easier... so pirate copies of films can be traced, maybe individually.

Re:The other reason...

[nahdude812]

This watermarking would be easily defeated with a posterization filter. Just dither every color to the nearest multiple of 2 or 3, or whatever threshold is necessary. We shouldn't see much perceptible loss in quality, but the watermark would be eliminated.

Watermarking is actually generally about altering the data stream in a way that is invasive enough that removing it would unacceptably degrade quality. Thus all watermarking will be perceptible, or else it is too easily defeated. I think the rule of thumb is something like twice the quality loss that the watermark introduces is necessary to remove the watermark.

It's the extra BandWidth!

[baldusi]

If you read the areticle carefully, you'd find that the bandwidth has been pushed up to allow a 1920x1080x24bit (HDTV 1080) display to be update at 90hz. That would allow a 2048×1536 (think Apple 30" Cinema Display) to be run at 60hz with a Type A connector. That's an interesting development.

Re:It's the extra BandWidth!

[Anonymous Coward]

Still no where near NHK's UHD TV... ;P

7680x4320 pixel resolution at 60fps

Source: http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/technology/show Article.jhtml?articleID=188500682

Works for the tetrachromats!

[kbob88]

This will work nicely for the very few tetrachromats among us, (http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a24199b1ef8.h tm). These are women who through genetic accident have an extra gene for color in the eye: "that woman's retinas would have four different types of photopigments: blue, red, green, and the slightly shifted green." They apparently have a much more finely tuned sense of color. Of course, there's probably only a few of them around, but hey, we're all about accessibility here!

Daisy-Chain Or Make It Cheaper

[TerenceRSN]

I have an HDMI enable HDTV and I use it. It's good I guess but the problem I have with HDMI is that it's limited to one stream of information per connection. Look at firewire, it allows you to daisy chain multimedia and other devices and it works pretty well. I'm sure HDMI has way more bandwidth but most people aren't looking to get 8 streams of digital audio and 1080p. I'd be much happier if I could daisy chain a cable high-def box with a DVD player or game console and send that to my TV. In my setup I run an HDMI cable from my cable box to my TV but since my TV (a panasonic) doesn't have any digitial audio output I still need to run a S/PDIF optical cable from my cable box to my audio receiver.

What a truly revolutionary digital interface would provide in my opinion is all the goodness of digital audio and video over one cord for several devices with a common protocol for controlling what's being used. This would simplify cable hook-ups plus make it easier to switch between sources (I know my parents have a horrible time switching from DVDs to TV to VCR, etc.).

Re:Daisy-Chain Or Make It Cheaper

[gravy.jones]

If you upgraded to an HDMI receiver as "the brain" to your A/V system then you could do this. All of your A/V would plug into the receiver and your TV would be on the monitor output. I do this except just using component video. My HDTV gets 1080i and 5.1 Dolby digital and/or DTS from the digital cable box using component video and monster spdif cables. They connect to the receiver and my TV is on the monitor out. If you have a DVD player that will upconvert the signial to HDMI then you should be able to get 720p or 1080i resolution from your DVD's. I don't currently own one like this but plan on upgrading to a Sony HDMI receiver eventually. I still think my DVDs playing 420p with 5.1 dolby digital or DTS have amazing clarity. Be prepared to pay a small fortune in cabling costs. I am also viewing on a Sony 34" tube TV which has the best picture that I have ever seen.

We know who signed up for the beta

[hurfy]

So the first eyeball they cook is just the warning eh?

sorry , couldn't resist :)

c'mon parent can get at least one funny mod

obviously infrared

[hurfy]

We all know:

In Soviet Russia the TV watches YOU.

In a sentimental nod to the cold war we have to one up them thus:

In New USA the TV watches YOU in the DARK ;p

All those dark living/bedrooms are boring to monitor don't ya know ;)

HDMI hardware support

[path_man]

Really, shouldn't the industry concentrate on properly implementing to the existing spec's before they bother with new & improved features?? I currently have an HDTV Panasonic plasma panel, a Denon receiver and a SciAtl set-top-box all tied together with HDMI, and I cannot get a signal because HDMI does not properly authenticate for the very reason HDMI was created -- to legally broadcast copy protected signals.

I am personally sick of these half-assed industry rollouts where most of the spec is adhered to by vendors, but the rest is blatently ignored, just so they can be first to market with a shiney new badge on their product. There is so much inoperability between HighDef products and home-theatre in general, that you're really playing russian roulette by being the first on your block to try an untested combination of components.

To you vendors out there: GET IT RIGHT first. You know why folks aren't lining up outside their local electronics boutique to get the latest HD gear? They are pretty sure that the stuff isn't going to work and they won't be separated from their hard-earned dough by the latest marketing gimmick.

PS - in case anyone wants to know my "workaround" I actually had to downgrade to connecting my SciAtl box to the Denon via component RGB cables then run HDMI to my panel. I talked with a Denon tech and this was the only workaround due to the stupidity of the *ahhem* engineering *ahhhem* at SciAtl. Maybe the Cisco acquisition will fix that nonsense.

Re:HDMI hardware support

[Rob_Bryerton]

Not to sound like a jerk, but until you quit buying this 1st gen crap, they'll keep pushing it out the door. It's really simple...

Re:HDMI hardware support

[vanyel]

Diverging slightly, this reminds me of the problem I ran into: I just bought a new house and setup a theater in it. As part of that, I bought a new Denon 3805, which has a feature where it converts all video inputs to HDMI, so I only have to run one relatively small cable to the projector, a Sharp XV-Z10000. It has a DVI input, but HDMI-DVI adapters are simple and readily available. Get everything hooked up, and find that my HD Tivo works, my progressive DVD recorder works, my old regular Tivo does not, and my non-progressive dvd player does not work. After some discussion with Crutchfield tech support (which almost made paying their premium worth it), it came out that the Sharp does not support interlaced input on the DVI port, and the Denon doesn't de-interlace in the up-conversion process. I nearly sent the receiver back, but the old one had some other problems the new one solved, and 99% of my watching is either the HD Tivo or the progressive dvd player, and running an extra S-video cable isn't that big of a deal, so I kept it.

It reared its ugly head again recently when I wanted to record something from the HD Tivo to the DVD recorder: I've not used the S-video connection for some time, and for various reasons, the cabling is still temporary. I had to tell the HD Tivo to switch to the S-video output to record to the DVD recorder, and found the S-video connection wasn't working. Try reconfiguring a Tivo without the video working!

I'm told by a knowledgeable friend that the DVI spec does not include interlaced input options. I assume HDMI must or the upconversion feature would be useless, but it's yet another reminder to double check interface compatibility when getting things you want to talk to each other.

Re:HDMI hardware support

[StikyPad]

You're really playing russian roulette by being the first on your block to try [DUH].

Where DUH is one or more of the following:
    BetaMax
    iPod Nano
    MiniDisc
    DIVX
    Capri Pants
    Any new car model
    The Pentium
    Joint NASA/ESA orbiters
    Vioxx
    HDMI
    Anything new.

The early adopter is pretty much a beta tester who pays for the privelage. Consequently, he is rarely the first person to have a fully working version, since he'll (hopefully) make damned sure the bugs have been ironed out before buying the next one. I call it the early adopter paradox. (I just coined that phrase, and the Early Adopter Paradox is Copyright 2006, me.)

No, the answer is an orange and two lemons.

[HTH NE1]

Essentially you want to have your colors go as deep as you need to to make differences imperceptible, which this (supposedly) does. After that going even deeper would be a waste.

Of course, reasonable limits aren't. Just because human perception says you don't need to put out gradations twice as precise as human vision to conceal them doesn't mean we won't use other devices to help us perceive more, much like you can use a CCD camera to turn infrared light visible, or that it needs to support more to conceal the compression artifacts from us.

And as someone else mentioned, watermarking becomes easier. Which is to say, to borrow from Douglas Adams (Mostly Harmless/Quintessential Phase), they can use the color gradations you can't perceive as data channels.

In other words...

[SuperKendall]

It makes far more sense to buy a $500 PS3 and use component cables to connect it than to use HDMI which may not even work!

I read similar complaints around the first HD-DVD player, which had trouble connecting via HDMI to a display.

Supposedly the HDMI v1.3 is the "stable" spec, we shall see... I too think it's rediculous that HDMI was integrated into things in such a buggy state as it is today.

It's an upgrade to 10, 12, and 16 bit color depth.

[Animats]

Right now, we're mostly at 8 bits of data per color channel. This upgrade supports 10, 12, and 16 bits of color per channel, or 24, 30, 36 and 48 bits per pixel.

This will be a big help in reducing banding on smooth gradients and artifacts during fades. Actually, you don't get more colors; you get more luminance range. It would probably work just as well to have 16 bits of luminance and two other color difference channels of 8 bits, but the HDMI people went uncompressed.

Now the compression people have to go to work and deal with the issues of when it's worthwhile to send that much data and when it isn't.

Yes

[SuperKendall]

Unfortuntley the Vrusk are region 99 and as such will have to wait a long time for any new releases - the only movie to be released for some time to come in that region is the Vrusk translation of "The Color Purple".

Very True

[SuperKendall]

It is unfortunate in the extreme that all of the improving digital video standards are being done in a form that mandates the use of DHCP. Supporting HDMI is supporting the very same technology that will not let you play movies at a full resolution on your PC and VGA monitor if they ever decide to enable the ICT flag - and the more people that buy HDMI devices the sooner they are able to turn on that flag without fear of pushback and lost sales from consumers.

Oh Yeah...

[Nom du Keyboard]

color depths beyond what the human eye can perceive

Oh, yeah. That'll be useful.

Re:Oh Yeah...

[MmmmAqua]

If you're the MPAA, the ability to watermark content in non-visible wavelengths may be perceived as *very* useful.

Re:Oh Yeah...

[bombshelter13]

Not really. We'll juse make ripping software that introduces white noise on the bits that are below human perception, thus wiping out any watermarking.

Re:Oh Yeah...

[MmmmAqua]

That's why I said 'perceived'. The MPAA is still intent on pushing DRM on us, though, so to them any new technology which offers yet another avenue of restriction will seem useful.

The good part is that their stance doesn't appear to be tenable in the long term; the bad part is that for the short term they can afford to buy all the legislation they need to hang on as long as possible.

Re:Bad video games. Bad!

[smbarbour]

It could be worse. Frequently when I type, the words I write come out like speech recognition output. The words have no relation to what I'm trying to type, but when read aloud, it is similar to what I was trying to type.

"Open the iPod and play 'The Doors', HAL."

Re:I hate to restate the obvious but...

[NerdENerd]

Sorry for wanting technology that gets rid of those color bands my eyes can notice on current panels. Got and watch something from your BETA collection.

Accelerated evolution

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>I don't think the human eye is going to evolve to greater color sensitivity

Haven't you seen the ads? Chicks really dig guys who can see deep color and are eager to bear their children.

JAckass?

[reklusband]

This is fucking slashdot. It doesn't count.

Re:JAckass?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is your employer speaking. We need to have a word.

Re:JAckass?

[reklusband]

Self employed consultant. Slashdot REALLY doesn't count.

How about an upgrade to make HDMI work right?

[fisternipply]

As an A/V professional, I'd be happy with a new HDMI spec that actually worked right and reliably. Us folks in the biz are still using analog component video for HD, and will until things like HDCP handshake errors and mysterious port disablings are a thing of the past.

Sweet merciful crap...

[otis wildflower]

... howsabout getting devices of the _current_ generation to work properly? So folks can, I don't know, use video switching receivers and not have to worry about HDMI version compatibility?

Then again, "This one works, really, we mean it this time!" as an ad slogan only seems to work for Microsoft...

Being directly involved in this industry...

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it very interesting when customers ask me about both xvYCC (extended color gamut) and HDMI 1.3. The problem is that the entire chain needs to support 12-bit color schemes. And yet, they don't. When I ask my customers about the sources, they kinda scratch their heads and don't really know or say something like "PS3" but that's it. Nothing else. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray don't support it. Component output doesn't support it. Virtually all PCs have no support for it.

But even if you have a source, then you need an image processor that supports it (and all image processors are 10-bit max right now), plus you need a display engine interface that supports it. Dual-channel LVDS today supports 1080p 10-bit, but that's about it. Nothing supports 12-bit unless you custom build it, and that costs a lot of money. That special Sony panel that supported xvYCC is truly a special case, and interfaces don't exist that can do it today. Believe me, the majority of the panel suppliers (i.e. Samsung, LG, CMO, AUO and Sharp) will not support this unless there's an interface that supports it. That won't come until DisplayPort gets standardized, and that won't happen for at least four years.

Bottom line: don't hold your breath on the promises of 12-bit color. It'll be a long time before it becomes mainstream.

I thought I saw the demo

[Scoldog]

It had all the colours of the rainbow and a lot more, it was so beautiful I got down on my knees and wept.

Then I realised it was only a costume some kid was wearing outside the discount shoe market.

Re:Bad video games. Bad!

[Short Circuit]

Dave had a cold. That's why HAL kept refusing his orders.

Re:I hate to restate the obvious but...

[Khyber]

Okay - I just pulled DOA out of storage along with my BetaMaxPro player. I don't see any color bands at all.

Deep Throat

[Anonymous Coward]

I made a funny.

RTFA

[writertype]

Wouldn't it be great if the article actually talked about that? Oh wait -- it did!

Hey spun

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when we used to make out to this hymn?

But wouldn't it be dangerous...

[okvol]

To display an image with octarine? Hint: Terry Pratchett

Re:But wouldn't it be dangerous...

[geekoid]

Hint: Telling people the reference ruins it.

excellent

[sciencecneisc]

i support this 100% even at the cost of bandwidth. always go over the limits of what we can use. give us 192khz audio and uncompressed resolutions. don't hold back.

Deep colour on a 6bit/colour/pixel Display?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do we need this as most highres LCD (atleast on the PC monitor side of things) can only dor 8bit colour by dithering and is only 6bit system without the dithering?