4:2:2 or 4:4:4 or RGB?

jimdove

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Just messed about with the upscaling features of my panny 855 dvd player connected to my px60, watched crank, it looked great, i noticed some colour settings on the output mode of the hdmi menus, these were something like 4:4:4 4:2:2 and RGB. which is best quality plz :)
 
You sure thats correct 4:4:4 in broadcast terms is definately better than 4:2:2?
 
I'm going by what it said reading through "dvd benchmark" what he use's when testing dvd players.
 
Leaned something new today. My player offers the same options and I had it set to RGB, might try the other settings.
 
As far as I know 99% of dvd's are encoded at 8bit (4:4:4) so 10bit being "better" or not depends on the display,I've been using 10bit but as I couldn't see much difference (between 8 and 10) and reading through some stuff on the net about dvd encoding I'm using 8bit,just try out the different setting and see what looks best to you and check what your display can handle.
 
DVDs are encoded in 4:2:0 format. The chroma resolution is only a quarter of the luma resolution. The answer lies in whichever unit is best at doing the upsampling from 4:2:0 to 4:4:4. The only way to tell that is to try both and see which looks best to your own eyes!
 
Hi
I just tried out a new Sony NS76 DVD player on our Mirai 27" DTL-527V200 via HDMI 720p. I picked a night scene from 'The Warriors' and switched between RGB and YCbCr. The difference was very obvious.

The YCbCr setting is the default and the picture was rich with good colour detail, deep blacks, full fleshtones, and plenty of shades in the dark parts of the picture.

The RGB setting gave a very washed out looking picture with the deepest blacks turning to grey, and a faded look to the entire colour range. It could be that if I totally recalibrated the LCD I might improve the picture, but I believe the adjustments would be too drastic.

I agree with others on this thread that there is no harm in trying out both settings and judging for yourself. Just make sure you properly set-up the display for each setting, maybe using the THX Optimizer on many DVDs such as the 'Star Wars' films (look for the THX logo on the covers).

Hope this helps
 
The RGB setting gave a very washed out looking picture with the deepest blacks turning to grey, and a faded look to the entire colour range. It could be that if I totally recalibrated the LCD I might improve the picture, but I believe the adjustments would be too drastic.
That would be because your LCD expects an RGB source to be a computer. In the video world, black is at 16, with blacker then black below this. In the computer world, black is at 0 with no blacker then black. So your DVD is set to output RGB but with a video black level of 16, but your LCD is interpreting it as having black at 0, so 16 shows as grey not black. A similar thing will be happening at the top with whiter then white, but this is not so obvious. If you really want to, you can calibrate this issue away simply by turning down the brightness.
This is also why there is sometimes an option for "enhanced" black level or range when RGB is selected, whereby the black level is set to 0 (and the white level to 255). But this of course wipes out the BtB and WtW information.
 
Hi Mr Nice

Thanks for that concise explanation. After ages seaching for this info on the net, Wikipedia I finally get it. I'm going to try it out again.
 
Hi
Tried both settings, and YCbCr suits the set-up of our 27" Mirai display. I had to put the Brightness setting down to about 30% before it looked dark enough on RGB, and the image looked a bit flat.

My Dad's Technosonic 32" LCD worked best with RGB, as the YCbCr setting was far too dark. I had to put the Brightness level up to 90% on the Technosonic before YCbCr was watchable whereas 60% was fine on RGB

It seems that certain displays favour one or the other setting, so it is worth trying both.
 

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