Gadgetory

everyone knows HD and retina they're marketing terms that mean better image quality but they're only about the resolution or the fineness of the image see that right there that mess you're looking at is a high-resolution HD image but with very low color depth color depth is incredibly important if you want to experience your content the way the Creator intended color depth refers to the amount of data that can be used to indicate the color of each dot or pixel on your display one bit would be black and white tube it would be shades of gray an 8-bit allows a 256 color palette in short more bits of color depth translates into more colors that can be displayed so brain on the bits well there are challenges processing power on CPUs and graphics cards used to be a bottleneck and while today they're fine for a high quality image every link of the chain needs to be high quality challenge number one is data storage and Internet bandwidth digital files with high color depth are really big to save space and bandwidth they usually get compressed websites like YouTube streaming services like Netflix and even your cable TV provider are all serving highly compressed video which negatively affects color fidelity you will often easily detect where the approximations are being made where the Creator intended for the colors to blend smoothly together but instead you see blocks or bands of the same color because to save on infrastructure costs much of the data has been lost challenge number two is displays let's say you pony up for a blu-ray of your favorite movie and then watch it on a cheap TV or TN panel monitor in this case the data is all there but your display is not capable of reproducing all those colors so you'll see the same blockiness and color banding as before where the display is just approximating the color as best it can all right so let me get this straight Linus you're telling me that my viewing experience sucks when I was perfectly happy with it before and then you're following up by telling me that there's basically nothing I can do about it without spending a bunch of money anyway are you just trying to make me unhappy no I'm not I know all of this and I'm still perfectly happy and and you know Canada here with my Canadian internet connection and you know Canadian Netflix it especially doesn't bother me on small screens like on a phone or a tablet and in vibrant scenes with many varied colors it only really bugs me in dark scenes with many similar colors I mean see that right there the blockiness and lack of detail on the bunny when he's covered by the shadows is a perfect example of what we're talking about and just because we're aware of this and understand it better doesn't mean we have to change anything I just wanted to cover this topic for a while so that I can explain to folks why they're HD image doesn't always look that great that way if they do want to do something about it they'll know what to do look for content that uses high-quality codecs and is encoded at higher bit rates the higher the bit rate or the amount of data per second in the video stream the higher the color depth is likely to be try higher quality content first before upgrading your display and use shadows as a quick and easy benchmark to see if it's making a noticeable difference and if it doesn't make a difference to you then that's great because there is a limit to what your eyes can see anyway before more color depth really doesn't make a difference anyhow speaking of shadows our featured audiobook from audible.com today is into the darkest corner by Elizabeth Haynes you can get it or something else for free by going to audible.com/veritasium Sony at the newest thing out there but it's not like I was going to go through all 150,000 audiobooks they have to find another one that had shadows or darkness in the title for my segue now was I I mean I guess I could have gone with like heart of darkness or like book of shadows actually I don't know if there's a real book of shadows it's just something that's in like every fantasy novel ever there's always like black shadows anyway I seem to have lost track of what I was talking about make sure when you sign up you go to audible.com slash tech quickie so they don't cut me off then the only content I'd be able to afford to make for you guys would be though color debt you gross anyway like the video if you liked it share it if you really liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment or post on the Linus tech tips forum if you have any suggestions for episodes that you like to see on fast as possible and as always guys don't forget to subscribe to tech wiki for more videos just like this one