everyone knows hd and retina they
marketing terms that mean better image quality but they're only about the
resolution or the fineness of the image
see that right there that mess you're looking at is a high resolution hd image
but with very low color depth color depth is incredibly important if you
want to experience your content the way the creator intended color depth refers
to the amount of data that can be used to indicate the color of each dot or
pixel on your display one bit would be black and white two bit would be shades
of gray and 8 bit allows a 256 color
palette in short more bits of color depth bring translations into more colors that
can be displayed so on the bits well there are challenges processing
power on cpus and graphics cards used to be a bottleneck and while today they're
fine for a high quality image every link
of the chain needs to be high quality challenge number one is data storage and
internet bandwidth Digital files with high color depth are really big to save
space and bandwidth usually they get compressed websites like youtube
streaming services like netflix and even your cable tv provider are all serving
highly compressed video which negatively affects color fidelity you will often
easily detect where the approximations are being made where the creator
intended for the colors to blend smoothly together but instead you see
blocks or bands of the same color
because to save on infrastructure costs much of the data has been lost challenge
number two is display let's say you py up for a blay of your favorite movie and
then watch it on a cheap tv or tn panel monitor in this case the data is all
there but your display is not capable of reproducing all those colors so you'll
see the same block and color banding as before where the display is just
approximating the as best it can right
let me straight telling my ‏su when i
was perfectly happy with it before and then you're following up by telling me
there's basically nothing i can do about it without spending ach money anyway are you trying to make me unhappy no i'm not i
know all of this and i'm still perfectly happy in you know canada here with my
canadian internet connection and you know canadian netflix it especially
doesn't bother me on small screens like on a phone or a tablet and in vibrant
scenes with many varied colors it only really bugs me in dark scenes with many
similar colors i mean see that right there the block and lack of detail in
the bunny when he covered by the shadows is a perfect example of what we're
talking about and just because we're aware of this and understand it better
doesn't mean we have to change anything i just wanted to cover this topic for a
while so that i can explain to folks way why their ht image doesn't look that
great if they always look that great do want to do something about it they'll know what to
do look for content that uses high quality codex and is encoded at higher
bit rates the higher the bit rate or the amount of data per second in the
video stream the higher the color depth is likely to be try higher quality
content first before upgrading your display and use shadows as a quick and
easy benchmark to see if it's making a noticeable difference and if it doesn't
make a difference to you then that's great because there is a limit to what
your eyes can see anyway before More color depth really doesn't make any
difference speaking of shadows our
featured audiobook from audible.com today is into the darkest ‏corner by
elizabeth haes you can get it or something else for free by going to
audible.com quicky linked in the video description and signing up for a new
account it's an editor pick on audible it won amazon's book of the year award
in 2011 so it ain't the newest thing out there but it's not like i was going to
go through all 150,000 audiobooks they have to find
another one that had shadows or darkness in the title for my segway now was i i
mean i guess i could have gone with like heart of darkness or like book of
shadows actually don't know if there's a real book of shadows it's just
something that's in like every fantasy novel ever there's always like a book of
shadows anyway i seem to have lost track of what i was talking about make sure
when you sign up you go audible.com tech quicky so they don't cut me off then the
only content i'd be able to afford to make for you guys would be low color
depth you gross anyway like the video if
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