HDTVs Dive into Deep Color..

[IGBT]

Text

Most TVs have 8-bit color depth--17 million colors," says Joseph C. Lee, a Silicon Image product marketing director. "Ten-bit color depth has one billion colors. Twelve-bit is where most people can't detect a difference any more."

Silicon Image demonstrated deep color technology in a prototype DLP HDTV at CES, showing images with standard 8-bit color depth changing to 10-bit color depth. At the demo, differences in contrast appeared slight but perceptible. Gradually shaded images showed less marked banding in 10-bit than in 8-bit color depth. Product Marketing Director Stevan Eidson calls the look "snappier, much cleaner" than typical HD images.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Sounds cool, but I have to wonder if it would really matter if no one's going to broadcast in a higher bit depth format?

 

[IGBT]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
Sounds cool, but I have to wonder if it would really matter if no one's going to broadcast in a higher bit depth format?

..wondering if it would reveal more depth in standard dvd's?

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: IGBT

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
Sounds cool, but I have to wonder if it would really matter if no one's going to broadcast in a higher bit depth format?

..wondering if it would reveal more depth in standard dvd's?

If the video is stored in an 8 bit per channel format (I honestly don't know), then you won't get any more out of current DVDs, unless perhaps the TV takes advantage of its additional bit depth by delivering smoother interpolation between pixels of nearby colors (since the standard definition DVD would have to be scaled up anyway, one might as well "fill in" between the pixels with a smoother gradient of color).

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

it won't matter because nobody is going to broadcast in a higher bit depth format.

higher bitdepth = more bandwith

cable companies are increasingly compressing HD streams even further now and it will only get worse as more HD channels are added.