What is “Deep Color” and why is Deep Color so important?

What is “Deep Color” and why is Deep Color so important?

Basically, deep color expands the colors on the display from millions to billions. This gives a vividness and color accuracy which has not been seen before in display technology. Deep Color defines colors by using an algorithm that can specify any color in that is found in nature. Deep Color gets rid of the on-screen color banding, for tonal transitions that are smooth and graduations of color that are very subtle. It enables increased contrast ratio, and can represent many times more shades of gray between black and white. Deep color with a color bit depth of 24 bit is normally called true color. However, some people use true color interchangeably with deep color.

The notable addition to the new HDMI 1.3 specifications is the support for 30-, 36-, and 48-bit RGB or deep color, a specification that takes color depths beyond what the human eye can see. The standard that govern today's displays is called the ITU 601 standard. This standard will only allow 60 to 80 percent of all the variety of available colors, even if the display unit itself is capable of supporting more. Most of the displays only have a color bit depth of usually 24 bits RGB. This color bit depth will give sixteen million colors and that is distinguishable by the human eye. This is the cause of onscreen effects and scaling which is noticeable by people. With 36 color bit depth and 48 color bit depth the human eye does not have the ability to distinguish these effects. A device that has the capability to directly display colors in a specific format without having to minimize the number of colors by software is called a deep color device. This extra bit depth is needed to minimize posterization with extended gamuts such as xvYCC.

The actual definition of deep color is divided and so there are actually two definitions for this technology. The first definition is a color that has a low lightness and a high saturation degree. These colors usually have minimal white in them. The second definition of a deep color is that a deep color is a strong or intense color with no appearance or hint of black. Deep colors may also be called accent colors. Usually deep color means that a color bit depth between 30 and 48 are utilized in the display.

Deep color may also be referred to as xvYCC, or Extended gamut YCC.

It is extremely important to understand that every movie that was ever transferred to a DVD or other digital format has been transferred using 8-bit color depth. While the newest Deep Color format might give an improvement in the quality of the picture, there is no content currently available, no archived material, no movies, and no TV shows, that can be trans-coded easily into the new system. With the current problems of Digital Rights Management (DRM) and High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) just starting to be worked out, it is highly unlikely that the entertainment industry and Hollywood will hurry to produce software that is an exact copy of the original movie quality. The first place Deep Color will be used is in advanced gaming systems, starting with the Playstation 3 in November 2006.

What deep colors actually means is that there are more colors. With a color bit depth of 30 bit the number of available colors becomes one billion. If the color bit depth is changed to 36 bit, the number of available colors jumps significantly to sixty nine billion colors. If the color bit depth is changed, this time to 48 bit, the available colors will number 2800 times one trillion. This is an enormous amount of colors. Plus a higher bit resolution can display more shades of gray. With 30 bit color depth four times more gray can be represented. Eight times more gray, or even higher, can be represented by a 36 or 48 color bit depth.

Researchers have estimated that the amount of colors seen by the human eyes number in the tens of thousands. But, depending on the lighting conditions and any surrounding colors, a human eye can tell the difference between millions of differing shades, an example is that you’ll be able to distinguish many more shades of black in darkness than you can see in brightness, so the additional shades will show a noticeable difference, but it is uncertain when the number stretching stops becoming useful to the human eye.