HDMI Spec Upgraded To Support 'Deep Color' 142
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."
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
"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? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
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:beyond what the human eye can see? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:HDMI hardware support (Score:3, Informative)
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.