16 and 32bit on lcds/tfts

Phil2008 · 22 May 2006 at 23:53

All lcd and tft monitors are 16bit colour, so why does videos/dvds look better in 32bit colour?

Phil2008 · 23 May 2006 at 01:33

16-bit and 32-bit shouldnt look any difference if the lcd is only 16-bit colour surely? 16-bit is 16.7 Million Colours right? :confused:

MadMatty · 23 May 2006 at 08:56

15/16 bit is measured in thousands of colours. 24/32 bit is Millions of colours, thats why 32bit looks best and theres no reason to use anything less on todays pcs

Zefan · 23 May 2006 at 09:15

speedy2004 said:
All lcd and tft monitors are 16bit colour, so why does videos/dvds look better in 32bit colour?

Who told you tft's only display 16 bit? You've been BS'd mate.

Just for the record

16 bit = 65,536 colours
32 bit = 4,294,967,296

Well, at least that's how it should be.

MrFunex · 23 May 2006 at 10:17

Quite an informative (if a little dry) article:

Here

Read "the colour depth issue", about 1/3 way down. Should clear everything up!

kleox64 · 23 May 2006 at 12:06

its 24bit + 8bit, the 8-bit being the available greys hence 32-bit.

technicaly speeking its 16.7 million collours, the rest is greys.

A 10-bit implementation isnt viable at the consumer level, it would achieve 30-bit colour plus another 10-bits for the greys.

Phil2008 · 23 May 2006 at 14:02

Zefan said:
Who told you tft's only display 16 bit? You've been BS'd mate.

Look at the lcd specs at overclockers, They all say 16.2 million colours. I would have thought 32bit is 32 million colours?

mosfet · 23 May 2006 at 15:16

To work out the number of colours available for a given bit-per-pixel count, raise 2 to the power of bitdepth.

16bits = 2^16: 65,536 colours
24bits = 2^24: 16,777,216 colours (16.7 million)
32bits = 24bits with 8bits of alpha channel information (256 levels).

kleox64 · 23 May 2006 at 20:21

the 16.2M I dont understand, I think its because the panels are using 6-bit LCD which dither to 16.2M colours. I dont know about you but anything less than 8-bit will have banding no matter how good the panel is.

Baddass · 23 May 2006 at 20:30

to help with all the terminology on TFT's:

24bit = 8 bit = 16.7 million colours
18bit with dithering = 6 bit = 16.2 million colours
18bit = 6 bit = 262,144 colours