AMD is NOT limiting colour depth on HDMI 2.0

AMD is NOT limiting colour depth on HDMI 2.0

| Source: HDMI Author: Mark Campbell

AMD is NOT limiting colour depth on HDMI 2.0

Over this weekend I have found that a lot of misinformation has been spread online regarding AMD's ability to display HDR ready content using HDMI 2.0, particularly in the few HDR ready gaming titles that are available.

In contrary to what some online publications may be telling you, AMD is NOT limiting HDR colour depth when using HDMI 2.0, with the HDMI standard itself being the limiting factor. Right now we assume that this release of false information is due to a lack of research on the part of writers working that these publications and we will not mention them any further. Now let's set the record straight.

Now let's set the record straight, the problem here lies with the HDMI standard itself and not with AMD, as even Nvidia has the same issues when using HDMI to display HDR content at 4K.

To put things simply HDMI 2.0 was designed for 4K and was never intended fully support HDR, at least at YCrBr 4:4:4 colour spaces at anything higher than 8-bit colour. This makes things problematic for HDR content, as anything HDMI 2.0 does not have enough bandwidth to support HDR at a full YCrBr colour sampling of 4:4:4 and instead needs to compress the signal to YCrBr 4:2:2 or 4:2:0.

We will need to wait for HDMI 2.1 or another future standard before we will get to play HDR content on at 4K with a full chroma colour sampling, with current HDR standards like HDR10 and Dolby Vision relying on Chroma Sub-Sampling to playback HDR content using HDMI 2.0.





To be clear AMD does support HDR standards like HDR10 and Dolby Vision, with these standards relying on Chroma Sub-Sampling to play 10-bit and 12-bit HDR content at a chroma sub-sampling on 4:2:2. HDMI does not support 10-bit or 12-bit displays with a full chroma sampling of 4:4:4 as it simply does not have enough bandwidth to do so.

What should be taken away from this article is that HDMI is holding modern display technology back, first limiting 4K TVs to 30Hz while we waited for HDMI 2.0 and now limiting 4K HDR to a chroma sampled content while we wait for the next iteration of the standard.

HDMI has long held back displays while DisplayPort has always been there to offer additional bandwidth for the displays of tomorrow, rather than just the displays of yesterday. It is baffling that the display community has not abandoned HDMI for DisplayPort, especially since DisplayPort is a royalty-free standard.

You can join the discussion on HDMI holding back the display industry on the OC3D Forums.

In contrary to what some online publications are saying, AMD is NOT limiting HDR colour depth when using HDMI 2.0.https://t.co/9KDahptduu pic.twitter.com/mxSrnCzMxU — OC3D (@OC3D) November 20, 2016

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