HDMI at 10bit/12bit???? Ever???

[Jeff Kilgroe]

OK,

I had been blissfully using the new RocketCine-X and playing with REDCINE-X since the new ones were released 2 weeks ago. But I had not run them to my plasma -- had it on a different system for use with the Kona.

As soon as I connect the plasma via a DVI to HDMI cable and select 1080p, I can only set the Rocket to 8bits. I knew this was the case before and was hoping that we would eventually get an update for 10bit or even 12bit HDMI support.

Deanan, Stuart, Rob... Anyone at RED care to give us an official answer about support for 10bit+ color via HDMI on the Rocket? Can we just get a "yes" or "no" as to whether or not it will happen?

If the answer is "no", would it be possible to ask why?

 

[Deanan]

DVI is primarily 8bit with higher than 8bit usually being non standard implementations via dual link or special formats that are tricky to support properly.

HDMI is supported directly on the Breakout Box and will be 10bit there (8bit will be enabled first and then 10bit).

 

[Lonzo N]

So, if I get the breakout box, will. Still need something llike the MX02 since I will be getting 10 bit through the BOB hdmi.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Thanks Deanan. That helps. So now I guess I buy the BOB. I was planning on doing that anyway at some point early next year. Actually that's good, means I can keep my 46" plasma and take a serious look at those new LG and Samsung LED LCDs for my DIT cart. Those things are looking great and are super thin and a lot lighter than the plasma. I compared the 55" LG to a 50" Panny 12th gen plasma the other day. Hate to say it, but other than perhaps a few less gradation levels, only really visible in the highlights, these new LCDs look better than the plasma! Richer color overall, but not over-saturated and more stable image. Both were calibrated by an ISF tech and displayed the same overall range.

 

[Curran Giddens]

Someone please report here when successfully connecting a Dreamcolor via HDMI to a Red Rocket BOB in 10-bit mode.

I'm trying to convince my friend to invest in a RR before the end of the year... He gets to use my Dreamcolor at his place if I can come over whenever I need to color and transcode some R3D's.

 

[Paul Ramsbottom]

10 bit TVs

10 bit TVs

On a vaguely related subject...

Does anyone know if the [now discontinued] consumer Sony XBR960 34" HD CRT which (according the the marketing information) has a 10bit comb filter, can display a true 10bit color image. If so, this would make a very nice client monitor / 10 bit 'sanity check' (even though the geometry can be horrible).

I'd like to be able to edit my 10 bit ProRes422 transcodes and grade them on my MXO+ACD (knowing the image there will be 8 bit) but also simultaneously pipe the 10bit signal out of my Kona 2 card via the 12bit Kona analogue component-out ports into the TV (figuring the component-in on the TV will be my best bet for 10 bit compatibility over, say the HDMI, which must surely still be 8 bit on a TV of this era). I figure that this set-up will give me a a good combination of pixel for pixel accuracy on the ACD and (with some careful calibration) a good sense of the true color on the TV. I believe that such a combination of LCD and CRT is a pretty common config in professional post-suites (albeit with $40K Sony broadcast CRTs).

If, indeed, the aforementioned beast of a TV, currently seeing light duty but consuming 25% of my living room floor-space is actually 10 bit. I have searched and searched but cannot find a clear explanation. Nothing on the web goes any deeper than just the fact it has a 10 bit filter. Gary Garchow over on CC thinks yes but I am still a little skeptical because it is a quite an old set now. I even pinged Tetsuo Urabe over at Sony, who I think may have had a hand-in with the original design but, as yet, no reply.

Finally, for any Kona 2 card experts who happen to be watching, will the 1080 23.98 psf output selection be the correct output setting. Based on everything I have read it is but I wanted to check. I suppose it must be that 'progressive segmented format" that my PS3 uses to send a 24P image from my Bluray disks to my 1080i TV?

Thanks for any thoughts.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Hi Paul,

The HDMI input on the 34XBR960 is 8bit only. It's an HDMI 1.0b implementation, IIRC -- I used to own one of these. This all came before the HDMI 1.2 spec supporting "Deep Color" at 10 and 12 bits. The 10bit comb filter is something different entirely.

The display would probably make a decent client monitor in a pinch, I would still feed it via HDMI. You may actually get a bit better color fidelity by using the component input via an SDI to component converter from AJA or Gefen.

PSF modes are not the correct modes for this TV. This TV has integrated 3:2 pull-down and is able to detect flags to enable this from progressive-scan sources like DVD, PS3, Blu-Ray, etc.. Edit> this TV doesn't display 1080p anyway, it tops out at 1080i. The pull-down and 24p reconstruction only works from 480i sources with 3:2 flags. It has decent motion compensation and decombing for 1080i sources though so you get a pretty stable 1080i picture, especially when frames are split from a 1080p Blu-Ray or similar source.

 

[Matt John]

A quick quirk you Mitsubishi owners out there might be aware of is that your Harmony remotes don’t handle input switching on the new WD sets well for some inputs (namely the HDMI ones), the reason for my set (WD-65831) was that I had to rename my single HDMI input to “HDMI-1″ and add another one “HDMI-2″.
I don’t know if this will help the others out there, but worth a try.