HDMI color banding

I recently discovered that my Sony LCD RPTV has terrible color banding when I use HDMI at 720P resolutions from my Oppo 981 and Sony PS3. I changed to component HD on the PS3 and the banding is eliminated. I couldn't change to component on my Oppo 981 since it doesn't not have this output. But I did try a couple component DVD players at 480P with the same movies and no banding. Then I hooked up my PS3 and DVD player to my Samsung LCD monitor via HDMI to DVI connection. Banding is back.

So why is everyone so excited about HDMI if it can't make smooth gradients in color? It seems the fix for this is to get HDMI 1.3 with "deep color". The problem is, my TV is HDMI 1.1 and Sony won't update that. Visible banding in color just doesn't seem acceptable this late in the digital video game and I'm suprised there aren't more posts about this subject..

Am I wrong on this? I don't know what else I can do to test my findings other than buy more TVs! :eek:

I'm starting to miss my Sony DVP-S7000 DVD player and 480i Toshiba Cinema Series TV....back when things were simple :p

It is not that HDMI cant smooth it out. Its just that its a higher quality picture so it makes defects more apparent.

Your Sony isn't 720p native resolution so it is doing video processing to scale up to screen size. That could be the problem. For component input different more circuits have to be used to convert to digital. This could be eliminating the banding or "hiding it". What does 480p look like? Also, some previous Sony LCD RPTVs converted digital input to analog and then back to digital for display. I don't know if this is true with your TV or not. If this is happening, it can't help. :) Also, don't forget to calibrate properly for each input.

larry