How important is 10-bit color, really?

[ADWyatt]

The 2014 Holiday shopping season may be a good time to purchase a 4k TV, for two reasons. First, thanks to companies like Vizio, prices of this year's units have started to decline. Secondly, manufacturers may be trying to make room for the release of new models. CES 2015 is only a little more than two months away as of this post, and there may be sufficient advances in next-gen 4k TVs that many consumers may decide not to buy this year's inventory after seeing the new prototypes in January.

At least so far as I'm aware, after speaking to technicians for Sony, Samsung and Toshiba it appears that most TVs this year employ an 8-bit color processor. (It appears that a notable exception is Vizio, but that company no longer supports 3D.) We all know that when 4k Blu-ray players are released, hopefully by the 2015 Holiday shopping season, they will employ 10-bit color processing. My understanding, though, is that TVs must have 10-bit processing power to take advantage of these players. If I'm right, that leaves me to ask just how much of an improvement 10-bit will be over 8-bit. Will the difference be night-and-day, or can we live with limitations for a few years?

Here's why I'm asking: My guess is that a TV such as Sony's 65" 850 might sell for as low as $2,500 this Holiday season. It doesn't have local dimming or 10-bit, but the overall picture is very good, and at that price it would be an attractive buy. I could keep the TV for three years, after which I believe OLED would be affordable and refined. I could accept the sell-off price of the Sony.

This sounds like a plan, but I have to wonder if the quality of next year's 4k TVs, with 10-bit processing and full backlighting improvements, will make me regret buying this year. I certainly would enjoy hearing opinions from the informed members of this forum.
Thanks in advance for all advice and opinions you may care to give.

[Suntory_Times]

I really think UHD (unless you are planning to game at such a resolution and have the hardware to) will not be worth it for a few years. This years uhd sets will not meet the standards and next years may not either (the standards are still not known). Once they do release you will be looking at first gen attempts at that standard and large improvements are nearly always seen in the first few cycles of such things.

How important is 10 bit color, hard to say as cinemas apparently get both 8 bit and 10 bit dcp's yet I never notice a difference. I'm guessing unless a pro calibration it will likely be rather minor (and with one it will still be minor but maybe slightly less so). But this is a guess.

[revgen]

10-bit color helps to eliminate banding without having to use dithering.

[Robert Zohn]

All true, but no TV can take advantage of a 10 bit panel as no consumer content is encoded with 10 bit information.

10 bit and even higher bit rate panels will be needed as Ultra HD evolves into larger color pallets, like DCI or rec. 2020.

Additionally, the reason 10 bit panels will reduce banding is because we'll finally see more steps of gradation, 8 bit panels can produce 256 shades, 10 bit displays can deliver 1024 steps. 10 bit panels are also capable of displaying a larger color space.

-Robert

[RWetmore]

Originally Posted by Robert Zohn

All true, but no TV can take advantage of a 10 bit panel as no consumer content is encoded with 10 bit information.

10 bit and even higher bit rate panels will be needed as Ultra HD evolves into larger color pallets, like DCI or rec. 2020.

Additionally, the reason 10 bit panels will reduce banding is because we'll finally see more steps of gradation, 8 bit panels can produce 256 shades, 10 bit displays can deliver 1024 steps. 10 bit panels are also capable of displaying a larger color space.

-Robert

Yeah, though I tend to think 10 bits is not quite sufficient for rec. 2020 and 12 bits is really needed; however, I sense the BD association is not going to give us more than 10 bit for UHD Blu-ray. We'll see though I guess.

Do you have any insider info on this? Any chance we might get 12 bits?

[Robert Zohn]

Originally Posted by RWetmore

Yeah, though I tend to think 10 bits is not quite sufficient for rec. 2020 and 12 bits is really needed; however, I sense the BD association is not going to give us more than 10 bit for UHD Blu-ray. We'll see though I guess.

Do you have any insider info on this? Any chance we might get 12 bits?

rec 2020 is referred in two ways. rec 2020 is the entire ITU specifications for Ultra HD and it also refers to and is used independently in regard to the expanded color space.

Myself and many experts in greater power than me are lobbying for P3 aka DCI color space, which although a slightly smaller color pallet it would fit with less compression in a 10bit channel. DCI also makes sense as we have tons of content ready to go as it has been the color grade standard for Hollywood movies whereas rec. 2020 color would need to be created from scratch.

Let's all get behind P3, the enhanced larger color pallet we can far more easily sustain vs. the proposed rec 2020.

-Robert

[Richard Paul]

Originally Posted by RWetmore

Yeah, though I tend to think 10 bits is not quite sufficient for rec. 2020 and 12 bits is really needed; however, I sense the BD association is not going to give us more than 10 bit for UHD Blu-ray. We'll see though I guess.

The Rec. 2020 color space is about twice the size of the Rec. 709 color space. When going from 8-bit video to 10-bit video you get 4 times the precision for each color component and 64 times the number of color combinations. 12-bit video is mostly for HDR which can have a maximum brightness 100 times higher than what is currently used for TV.

Originally Posted by Robert Zohn

I prefer DCI for several reasons.

- First, it currently available with thousands of Hollywood movies that are already graded for DCI so no need to create new and difficult to produce content.

- Second, for filmmakers to invest in new rec. 2020 equipment is too much of a burden as they are already considering buying HDR cameras and supporting equipment.

Rec. 2020 is going to be used by UHDTV and while improving color does increase the cost that is also true for 4K resolution and HDR. As for DCI P3 it was used since that was what could be done ten years ago with Xenon lamps. Technology has improved greatly since than and several consumer display technologies can now go far beyond the limits of Xenon lamps.

Originally Posted by Robert Zohn

- Third, we already know and love what DCI color looks like as it's been in the movie theaters for many years.

DCI P3 was released in 2005 and it has a smaller color space than film which can be seen in this diagram showing different color spaces. To fully capture the color of film the Rec. 2020 color space would be a good choice.

Originally Posted by Robert Zohn

Plus I stick to my estimate that we actually need more than 10bits or even 12bits.

Here is a link to an article that shows how 12-bit video can encode a brightness of 10,000 nits.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by ADWyatt

How important is 10-bit color, really?

Greater than 8bit encoded content, is the single most important thing you could wish for in regards to 4K Blu-ray - https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...ed#post9967092

It is especially crucial for HDR. HEVC already has native support for HDR, the challenge (which is doable) is to build gear which can decode HEVC HDR extensions.