RGB Full Range: Limited or Full?

RGB Full range allows the player to output the full RGB color gamut (0 - 255) as opposed to limited which is (16 - 235). Basically you get more information in the shadows and blacks, which of course means your colors are going to look richer and less washed out, especially on video games. However HD video uses REC 709 color gamut where black is usually defined at 16 so what you're seeing might be more a factor of more contrast rather than extra information.

The chromaticity chart shows the color range of REC 709 (the triangle) versus human vision color reproduction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CIExy1931_sRGB.svg

16-235, Limited, is correct for Blu-ray, OTA, DirecTV, Dish, etc. Your video display device should also be set to this range (Limited).

0-255, Full, is correct for computers (I do not game but would assume games to be 0-255). Once again, your video display device should also be set to this range (Full).

For bluray on the PS3 you want YCbCr output and superwhite ON.

This will maintain video levels 16-235 properly without clipping or remapping to 0-255.

Whether you should use RGB Full or RGB Limited is not decided by the media you are playing (games, DVD, Blu-ray) but is instead related to the HDMI input on your display (and how it is calibrated).

RGB Full has black at 0 and peak white at 255. (This is sometimes known as PC levels)

RGB Limited has black 16 and peak white at 235. (This is sometimes known as video levels - and is the broadcast and production video standard used in both SD and HD video standard 601 and 709)

If you replay a Blu-ray or DVD (which will be encoded 16-235) in RGB Full, then your PS3 will remap the 16-235 video to 0-255, which has the side effect of clipping any <16 or >235 content that may be present on the Blu-ray or DVD (sometimes known as Blacker than Black - BTB - and WTW - Whiter than White) (*)

If your display is a regular HDMI TV, then it is almost certainly delivered configured and calibrated for RGB Limited - as this is what an HDMI DVD player, HD satellite receiver etc. will usually output by default if using RGB output. (As 16-235 is the video standard used for DVD, Blu-ray and TV broadcasts).

If you are feeding your device to a PC monitor - configured for 0-255 levels (which is what most DVI PC monitors are set-up for) then RGB Full would be the best choice.

If you feed a 0-255 signal (RGB Full) into a display configured for 16-235 (RGB Limited) then you will get crushed blacks and clipped whites (as the content below 16 and above 235 will not appear any different to content at 16 or 235) - and the image will also appear to be artificially more saturated (richer colours)

If you feed a 16-235 signal (RGB Limited) into a display configured for 0-255(RGB Full) then you will get grey-ish/milky blacks, dull whites - and the image will look washed out and de-saturated (less colourful) (As the 16 black level in the source will be displayed as grey as it is above the 0 black level of the display, and the 235 peak white of the source will not reach the 255 peak white of the display)

(*) BTB and WTW in 16-235 video shouldn't contain picture content on properly mastered material - but they should ideally be preserved to allow overshoot and undershoot on sharp transitions (particularly in analogue sourced content) to be preserved without clipping to avoid ringing.

Especially if it goes to Germany

As mentioned it would seem best to keep the bluray in its native color space, but then I guess one should use RGB for the games.

Yes - though I'm never sure about YCrCb vs RGB over HDMI - as I'm always slightly worried some devices may not be as 601 vs 709 aware as others.

I'd trust a PS3 to convert YCrCb to RGB correctly using 709 colour space or 601 colour space depending on the source. Not so sure I'd trust every display to do the same... (And as the YCrCb to RGB relationshops in 601 and 709 are significantly different, getting this wrong can skew things)

In my experience, pretty much any HD display when presented with YCbCr input will select 601 or 709 decoding based on the incoming resolution, disregarding any colorspace flags. This will yield correct results for situations where SD-based sources are output SD and HD-based sources are output in HD. (A few will allow you to select the color matrix manually, which is a nice additional feature for situations where it's messed up as I describe below)

Only in situations where SD is being scaled to HD (or HD to SD) could this cause problems if the colorspace is not twisted from 601 to 709 by the upscaling device (or 709 to 601 if you're going HD->SD). I believe that the PS3 does this when upscaling SD content. However I'm not 100% sure of this, I don't recall having tested this specifically. There certainly are some upscaling DVD or HD-disc players which do not, and this can cause problems with regular DVD, though I wouldn't fault the display for this, rather the player in my opinion.

In my experience, both the PS3 and most displays do a very poor job documenting what their settings do, so it is very difficult to set them up correctly just by reading the documentation.

The best thing to do is get a setup disk (eg "HD Basics" or something similar), and look at the test patterns with various settings until you get settings that display the test patterns correctly.

Undocumented things I learned with "HD Basics" about my setup:
My display will ALWAYS overscan if YPrPb is sent to it, and NEVER overscan if RGB is sent to it. There are no controls to change this behavior.
While it is theoretically possible to adjust the color of a display with an extended color gamut to correct settings, it is impossible to do so with the color filter & test pattern supplied with "HD Basics" since the color of the phosphors do not match the color of the supplied filter. That method of adjustment only works if your phosphors match the standard exactly.