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Contrast this against the speed of “innovation” from television manufacturers, many of whom are desperately trying to sell customers on features they literally can’t take advantage of using current encoding schemes. Sharp has pushed its Quattron technology, despite the fact that there’s no provision in existing standards for a yellow pixel.

Multiple manufacturers use interpolation to insert frames into broadcast TV to reduce what’s called juddering, even though this tends to create artifacts, background noise, and complaints of unrealistic motion. So-called “240Hz” displays either pulse their backlights more rapidly or insert still more interpolated frames. In a sequence like the one pictured below, interpolation would create frames in between the points shown to smooth the character’s motion.

New standards always create a chicken-and-the-egg problem, but the pacing difference is particularly acute in this case — and that’s before we toss in Blu-ray. Blu-ray uses the H.264 HiP profile, which doesn’t support a number of H.265 features, including 10-bit color. Adopting such features, either via using a different H.264 profile or through H.265, would force the creation of a second Blu-ray standard with new players, discs, and televisions.

FilmstripThe final player in all of this… is us. LCD display vendors developed technologies like interpolation to improve high-speed action, only to meet with substantial pushback from consumers who claim the resulting video looks fake or suffers from what’s known as the soap opera effect. It’s hard not to be amused by the irony, given that real life occurs at substantially more than 24 fps-equivalent. The film industry didn’t adopt 24 fps in the 1920s because it represented some magical best-fit viewing option; it went with 24 fps because the advent of audio meant that film and soundtrack had to be synchronized — and faster film speeds meant using more expensive celluloid.

What began as an economic decision has turned into a standard that film purists protect with their lives. Fortunately, there are signs of a slow revolution; no less an authority than Peter Jackson has decided to film The Hobbit in 48p (48 frames per second).

H.265 isn’t going to be the final word in video encoding standards — we haven’t even touched on the benefits of using 32-bit floating point values to represent color space. We need better methods of keeping technology roadmaps in sync, and possibly standards that can evolve more effectively than H.264 has done to date. After CES 2012 and researching H.265, the question of when it’s a good idea to upgrade a television has become more confusing, rather than less. Uneven standard transitions creates market volatility, which is precisely what’s killing LCD manufacturers. Leaving more room for evolution within next-generation standards won’t obviate the need for upgrades, but it could make the process considerably easier on all of us.


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  • Anonymous

    AA… excuse me, but how to see the difference, when bot images are in JPEG format, 24bit/pixel, 8 bit/channel?
    Not to mention I am watching it on 8 bit/channel hardware /6 bit if on a TN monitor actually/.
    So, what difference?

    • Anonymous

      ya, it’s like showing how good the pictures of a new television are in a commercial viewed on an old television

    • Anonymous

      My display is a 23inch 1080HD monitor using DVI and I can see a difference between the 8 and 10 bit images on my 8bit display. What I see is more detail and a sharper image with the 10bit over the 8bit.

      If I had my way, I’d be using a CRT display that handles 1900×1600 32bit color instead of my current POS that only does 8bit color. God that’s so Windows 3.11 days as even win95 defaulted to 16bit color and offered the ability to use 32bit color.

      I’ll give an example of just how poor an excuse this is. When I’m saving images from raw, I am rarely using the jpeg format, instead I use gif as it supports 256 colors and using a program called Riot (google it) I’m able to get the same as a jpeg at 20 percent compression for 1/3 the file size that looks the same on my display. Why should I be so concerned about file sizes, how about all those folks still on dialup or using ipads/phones that pay for bandwidth. Smaller file sizes benefit them and if they can’t see any difference in quality, why bother with higher quality? If I need to offer a High Quality, it wont be a jpeg. Instead it’ll be a png file now. To me jpegs are a dead and dying format.

      • Joel Hruska


        You’re rather hilariously wrong about the capabilities of these various systems.  “8-bit color” in modern parlance refers to eight bits per *channel.*  Three channels = 24 bits of R, G, and B, + eight bits for an alpha (Transparency) channel. 32-bits. 8-bit color would be 255 colors in *total*, aka VGA circa 1991. 

        You convert from RAW to GIF? That right there makes it sound like you’re trolling. I hope you’re trolling

  • Joel Hruska

    The images are saved in as high a quality JPG format as I could manage; the original PNG’s are nearly 2MB each. This is why I linked the 1500Kbps images directly. 

    To answer your various questions: 

    1)  A 10-bit image that’s converted to 8-bit can still demonstrate better color accuracy and less banding. A number of HDTV’s bill themselves as internally sampling at 10-14 bits, and while this is irrelevant if they’re only handed an eight-bit signal, they’re capable of using higher internal fidelity to create a better picture. 

    The evidence of this may be best seen in the 1500Kbps images. If you can’t see a difference between them, your LCD is terrible. I’m working on a 27″ TN panel, and the difference between the two is immediately noticeable. The gap between 8bit and 10-bit at 3000 Kbps is more subtle, but it’s obvious to me. 

    2)  Your end point *is* accurate. The only way to see the “full” impact of 10-bit color is to use a 10-bit video card and display. This has always been the difficulty of writing about display technology; there’s no way for any reviewer to translate what he sees to what you see unless you’re working in a highly controlled environment where everyone has access to the same screens, video cards, calibration tech, and eyeballs. That last issue is generally thought insurmountable. ;) 

    • Anonymous

      A 10-bit image converted to 8 bit is just a 8 bit image, nothing more, and it can’t demonstrate anything. 
      But 10bit/pixel color space is good for postproduction, recoding and any sort of transformation /that includes dithering about what you are talking/, and there is where it’s used for more as 15 years /at least I know it for so long/, there /in post/ also 16 bit/pixel is sometime used, and even floating point channel value coding.
      Your LCD is just as terrible as mine /if not more/ and you can’t see any difference on it, it’s just that, because every /almost/ LCD is terrible. There really ere some specially calibrated monitors, but they cost some $10000+, used in studios and for preprint. Don’t say me you are using one of these.

      • Anonymous

         It seems like you know photo editing but don’t know math.
        10 bit encoding increases quality.
        The difference is quite obvious on my dE 0.15 average EIZO.

        • Anonymous

          10 bit turned in 8 bit = 8 bit = 100 bit turned 8 bit = analogue turned 8 bit
          where’s the difference /in math, dear/? The difference is in your head. Of course it also depends of the algorithm of turning – if once you downsample with better algorithm there really will be difference. Because every digital picture is a “downsamplification”, done in the camera first.
          What’s about the video, the downsamplification goes way further as 8:8:8 – cameras don’t use RGB color space, but one based on intensity/luminosity, associated with green color and two deviations of max 4 bit, after what it’s compressed… well, it’s considered that a camera, using 4:4:4 color space is a high quality camera, suitable for shooting cinema /or cinema quality video/ and these are rare and expensive gear /check Sony CineAlta for ex./, good professional camera compress in 4:2:2 color space, not so good – 4:2:0 or 4:1:1 /depends on if it’s NTSC or PAL/, and that’s the signal televisions receive. And it’s kept in HD as first stage of compression. But it’s  a long story.

          • DOSGuy

            I think I can explain it a bit better. My monitor is 1920×1080, and I have two high quality photos of the same lake: one is 2000 pixels wide, and the other is 4000. Whichever one I view, the image is going to resized to fit my screen, so they both end up being a 1920×1080 image on my screen, and yet the larger photo looks better. Shouldn’t it be 4000 turned 1920 = 2000 turned 1920? When you shrink two images, the higher resolution one will look better because you’re giving the image editor more information to draw the new image with.

            Likewise, it’s not true that 10 bit turned 8 bit = 100 bit turned 8 bit. Yes, they’re both 8 bit images, but one of the images provided substantially more accurate color information to the image editor. When the algorithm is choosing which of the 255 shades of each color to output, it will make better picks if the input was accurate to 10 bits instead of just 8. A 36-bit color scanner will produce a more accurate image than a 32-bit scanner, even though the resulting image will be downscaled to 24-bit. Both images will be limited to 16,777,216 colors, but Photoshop will pick the colors differently if you give it a 36-bit color image than if you give it a 32-bit color image. Two 24-bit color images, and yet one is measurably superior.

          • Anonymous

            The resolution and color depth should have no impact if both versions meet or exceed your output limitations.  To say otherwise would mean that you’re high and don’t understand math or physics.

            If you can only see 8/bit per channel, then the source color depth makes no difference.  If the resolution of one is 1080 and the other is 4k, they will look the same when displayed at 1080 (When using the same algorithm to show you a 1080 version).  Period.

            IF you are seeing better results from higher color depth or higher resolutions that means that the algorithm used to convert the original to the second version is inferior to the algorithm used to adjust your original image on the fly (Which is often true in Windows) – or – that your setup is actually displaying higher resolution or color depth.

            Plain and simple.  If you can only display 16 colors, then regardless of the source file, it will only display one of 16 colors.  Get it?

            The H265 algorithm may produce a better picture than H264 under these limitations, but that’s because it produces a better picture at 1080p 24bit color than H264 – Not because it is in 4k or 32 bit color.

          • Anonymous

             try viewing the 1080p version on maximized, and the hi res version scaled to 1080p.  If you’re looking at the 1080p version scaled down by just a few lines, it can wreak havoc on the scaling algorithms.

            But basically, you’re an idiot.  See below for a more involved explanation.  If that doesn’t help, go to wikipedia and relieve your ignorance.

      • Joel Hruska


        I can see a difference between the two images. Other people see a difference between the two images. I can see a further difference in color reproduction between the TN, S-PVA, and S-IPS panels that I own. 

        If you can’t see the difference other people note, it’s either your eyeballs or your screen.

        • Anonymous

          Both images you show are 8 bit images, so whatever difference you see, it’s between two 8 bit images, maybe created with using of different algorithms for compression, but they are 8 bit, both of them.
          And you may finish with different results using jpeg compression two times even on the same source, using slightly different settings, using different software package etc.  Don’t you know there are different qualities of JPEG? The same 8 bit JPEG. It’s the way it works. But it shows really nothing about the advancement of the 10 bit/channel/pixel image it’s created from. It can’t. More important is the quality of the final JPEG itself. Because it truncates the information. Whatever source is, as well as the source is with higher quality as the final JPEG. And more important is with how much information you are at the final.

          • Anonymous

            You would be right if talking about a lossless H.264 encode.
            However a 10 bit encode at the same bitrate as an 8 bit encode will look better, or need less bitrate for the same results.
            I suggest you read
            Also, there are PNG image comparisons now.
            As the first post you replied to already explained: yes, you’ll need a 10 bit monitor to get the full benefits (these go for ~$2300 now) but even on 6-8 bit displays there are improvements from using 10 bit encoding just like using a 16 bit LUT in a display improves quality.

          • Joel Hruska


            You appear to *really* want to argue this. 

            1)  I linked PNG images from the original render. It’s the exact same frame. 

            2)  I had to use JPG’s to create images of manageable size. I used the same program to create both, with a 95% quality ratio. 

            3)  Nothing you’ve said changes the fact that the 10-bit image looks better in both PNG and JPG. Are there other factors that matter? Absolutely, yes. Is it possible to create a scenario in which the 10-bit would look worse than the 8-bit?  Sure. 

            That’s not the point. The point is that even after compression and display, 10-bit color is superior to 8-bit color. 

          • Anonymous

            Joel, I think you should stress the point that any of the difference in these jpgs will have nothing to do with the resolution or bit depth of the original.

            Any difference that we can see in 24bit (8 per channel) pic of equal resolution will have more to do with the compression algorithm, which in the case of H.265 is superior.

            Basically, in addition to being higher resolution and color depth, the new algorithm standard renders each pixel with higher quality independently of the color depth or resolution chosen.

            Also, due to compression, H264 will drop information to fit within a certain stream size.  So, if there is too much action between frames, quality will go down.  For example: 24bit color generally takes the equivalent of two passes in standard h.264.  If the pixel in question is constantly changing (such a fast camera pan) – the color depth of that pixel will stay around 12bit (4 per channel, instead of 8).

            H264 does not offer the full bandwidth required to fully render each pixel at 24bit depths for each frame.

            H265 apparently has a compression algorithm that requires more decoding work, but renders a more faithful image that H264, even at lower resolutions and color depths – Regardless of the format of the original recording.

          • Anonymous

             Your PNGs Joel are also 24bit/pixel, meaning 8 bit channel, meaning they also can’t illustrate what you are saying about 8 bit vs. 10 bit. The difference in quality you may see is because the new algorithms manage to pack more information in the same size stream, because of their better compression, not because of 10 bit vs. 8 bit. 
            Which is actually what some_guy says :). 

  • Anonymous

    Sounds to me like H.265 will be the death kneel for high-end video on mobile computing platforms.

    Wait…wasn’t the PC supposed to be dead?  lolz

    Nice piece.  I am glad to see that mobile computing’s limitations aren’t going to effect everything.

  • Anonymous

    One thing i don’t get – how can increasing the colour depth have a better quality at the same bitrate? Surely its increasing the amount of data needed to describe the colour, therefore decreasing the bits available for other areas?

    I have to agree with regard to interpolation – it can look awful. Fine for maybe, something like a football travelling across a screen. But when complex motion is involved that’s harder to predict, it looks very unnatural.

    Can’t wait to see a true 48p movie, should be interesting. 

    • Anonymous

      Increasing the bitdepth to 10bits per channel indeed does increase quality even if the final vieweing is in 8 bits per channel becuase it is more precise as in less rounding in the math. 8bits creates a lot of rounding so the encoding is more precise.

      • Anonymous

        Ah i get it. Thanks for the explanation!

      • Anonymous

        When you are making changes or re-processing a source file, it may be advantageous to have more information to produce better quality results.

        However, when you are talking about displaying two pictures side by side with the same resolution and bit depth, you are using the same bandwidth (Your VGA, DVI, or HDMI cable).

        So, both pictures have been converted to be viewed at X resolution and X bit depth.  It doesn’t matter if one was converted beforehand, and the other was converted on the fly by your computer – They have both undergone the same technical transformation.

        So while you sound smart, you are in fact incorrect.  You are comparing one file taken at a lower value, to another file taken at a higher value and converted down.  The argument here is about two files that come from the same high quality source.  One file was converted beforehand, and the other file is converted by your OS or display because of lack of color depth.  If one looks better, it is because the conversion algorithm or process is superior to the other.

  • Roberto Tomás

    weird I thought the standard was 1080p60 – ie 60 fps.