Hdmi output help

YCbCr 4:4:4 or YCbCr 4:2:2, unless there is a reason why you need to use RGB. .

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Something has to convert YCbCr to RGB so our eyes can see it. If you choose 4:2:2, you are letting the TV do the conversion. If you choose 4:4:4, the player is doing the conversion. Do you have any test discs?

Very cool. Color compression patters are just one tool that you can use. I use the Spears and Munsil disc for such pattern.

I wouldn't be able to tell you that without testing. Set it to 4:2:2 and take a look at some patterns and content. Switch it to 4:4:4 and look at the same patterns and content

All things being equal and correct, YCbCr 4:2:2 is the ideal format for Blu-ray and HD video in general. There are a lot of reasons for this... the primary reason being that any and all video processing is done in YCbCr mode. So if you send RGB to a display, the display is about 90% certain to convert that to YCbCr for processing, then back to RGB just before the pixels are driven. So sending YCbCr 4:2:2 avoids some unnecesary conversions. If you send RGB to a video display and the Color and Tint controls are still active, that video display is converting RGB back to YCbCr for processing. If the Color and Tint controls can't be used when you send RGB to a display, the display passes the RGB video without processing.

All that said, some displays look better when you send RGB vs YCbCr -- in my experience it's about 5%-10% of displays just plain make better looking images when you send RGB. But you have to check every brand/model and even year. I've seen a Sony XBR panel look better when receiving RGB one year, but the following year XBRs look the same with RGB or YCbCr. Maybe 20-25% of displays look best when you send YCbCr and the remainder look the same whether they receive RGB or YCbCr.

When it comes to 4:4:2 vs 4:4:4... I've never seen a difference, though 4:2:2 is natively 12 bits (regardless of what you've read or heard elsewhere) unless you set the disc player to a lower number of bits. 4:4:4 won't be more than 10 bits and possibly not more than 8 bits so ramp patterns may look better in 4:2:2 mode than 4:4:4 mode. Discs are encoded with "8 bit" 4:2:0 (actual resolution is a bit less than 8 bits because of the chroma decimation required by this format). Disc players typically default to 12 bit 4:2:2 output (the HDMI standard for YCbCr HD). So the disc player converts 8-bit 4:2:0 data to 12 bit 4:2:2 data (typically, unless you change some settings).

Bottom line... your best choice most of the time is YCbCr 4:2:2 -- but every display should be checked to make sure it doesn't look better when you send RGB. If you send RGB and the display looks better, use RGB.

Consumer video uses digital levels 16-235 for Y and 16-240 for Cb and Cr. There should be no such thing as 0-255 for YCbCr formats. RGB can be sent as 16-235 or 0-255. Computer sources (computer generated, not online streaming) generally use 0-255 while anything consumer or streaming will generally be 16-235. Unfortunately, most disc players use some non-descriptive term to differentiate the 2 RGB modes... RGB, RGB Standard, RGB Normal, etc. typically indicate 16-235 which is appropriate for consumer video sources and streamed video. If the mode is labeled extended, full, enhanced or something similar, that typically means 0-255.

Doug you are the man!

That is a great post by Doug.

If I could sticky that as the answer forever on the YCC v RGB topic, I would.

Sometimes I think we'd do well with a Q/A style site ala the stackexhange websites (http://stackexchange.com/)

Does ycc4:4:4 full rgb setting on cablebox only work Correctly if you change the input to pc mode on the tv ?
Edited by Vic12345 - 1/15/13 at 2:15am

YCC and RGB are mutually exclusive.

RGB doesn't really have a 4:4:4, since it's not chroma sub-sampled, it's just always full resolution.

I've never seen a cable box that does PC levels, but how your display negotiates an RGB output is something that is specific to that display. There are no rules of thumb, you just have to test and see how it works on your set.

You didn't mention the model Pioneer player that you have, but you can drop over to www.hometheaterhifi.com and see if I've reviewed it, as if I have in the past couple years it'll test 4:2:2, 4:4:4 and RGB output. While they should all be correct, on some they are not (the player I just got in here does 422 and 444 correct, and totally screws up the RGB conversion). Even if I didn't test the exact model, a lot of them use the same output chips and firmware code, they just vary on features (WiFi, 2D to 3D conversion, etc...) so you can see how other Pioneers do. Bottom line is that if you can do 4:2:2 and it looks the same as the other modes, stick with 4:2:2.

Thanks sotti . I thought pc mode did not look as good for regular tv as movie mode here, but I did not fiddle much with it in pc mode.

Seems like very very small differences between them.