Some general color space questions... (1 Viewer)

[floepie]

I have an LCD TV with HDMI input connected to my nVidia's DVI output (DVI-->HDMI cable). I guess my first question is what color space do typical modern LCD TV's expect? PC Levels (0-255) or Video Levels (16-235)?

I assume that if I'm using either VMR9 or Vista's new EVR video renderer that they will output 0-255 levels, correct?

If the LCD is expecting Video Levels, wouldn't blacks be crushed for videos encoded at PC levels?

I don't see where I can change the color space output on my 7600GS video card, if that's even possible at all, to remap, if necessary, PC levels to Video levels.

One last question. If one were to reencode a DVD, whose levels are at Video, would the resultant encode have PC levels or would the levels remain at studio?

Thanks for any answers!

 

[tourettes]

I don't see where I can change the color space output on my 7600GS video card, if that's even possible at all, to remap, if necessary, PC levels to Video levels.

Current Nvidia display drivers have a setting that can be used to select between RGB (0-255) and YUV (16-235) colour spaces. Seems that my current driver installation is localized (grrrrr...) so I cannot tell the exact place where to look for the setting, but it's in the Nvidia control panel.

To find the correct setting just test wich setting gives you the correct black level.

 

[floepie]

Huh, I don't see such a setting in the latest driver package. Could you post which version you're running?

 

[quenthal]

Ok, I found YUV / RGB Color space settings in Nvidia Control Panel. As my projector and receiver expects 16-235 colorspace, I can see that it fixes especially normal desktop usage from crushed blacks.

However, in Mediaportal (VMR9) it would seem that RGB would give better (more vivid) colors than YUV. Both have as deep blacks and whites with DVD/TV sources (which are 16-235 too I think), but somehow RGB looks better.

I tried with DVD calibration disk and compared the output of my Geforce7050 HDMI to that of PS3. PS3 outputting (limited) RGB and YUV and HTPC's RGB looked the same, but YUV on HTPC looked somewhat pale, eventhough the blacks were black with it too. What could be causing this difference?

 

[dezed]

I believe there is no way in the latest nvidia drivers to change between RGB and YUV, at least through the dvi port. I think it tries to detect the correct colour space to use, but who knows if it works. The drivers are a mess, and my output colour space using the same renderer seems to change depending on the driver version, when using mediaportal. With the latest beta drivers, i find that the video levels will be converted to 0-255 RGB. This makes the picture look to have more depth and look more vivid, but it crushed shadow detail on my display. Are you sure, quenthal, that you're getting full shadow detail when using RGB? the blacks would be the same, but I suspect that your impression of more vivid colours has to do with black crush.