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

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?

[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.