Bitdepth - video card output

[hello_hello]

Lots of stuff I don't really know but I'll provide some info first.

My video card is an old Nvidia 8600GT.
My TV is a Samsung PS51D550 Plasma.
The two are connected via the video card's DVI-D out and the TV's HDMI/DVI input via a DVI to HDMI cable (it's the HDMI input specified for connecting a PC, although I don't think it matters unless you want to run the TV as a PC monitor.... 1080p @ 60Hz).
Oh..... and I'm running XP on the PC in question. Does the version of Windows make a difference regarding supported bitdepths?

Questions.....

Is the TV 10 bit capable? I think it is, although it doesn't have 10 bit calibration as I think the more expensive models (at the time) did, but it lets you specify an input colour space ("native" or "auto"). That kind of implies at least more than one bitdepth.

Is the video card 10 bit capable? I'm finding conflicting information.

If the answer to the above questions are yes each time, is there a way to tell when the video card's output it 10 bit? There's no bit depth settings in the Nvidia Control panel.

I can decode 10 bit video and MadVR shows it as a 10 bit output (Ctrl+J), but I assume that's only how it's being decoded. What happens from there..... renderer-video card-display etc..... I have no idea. Would the video card convert it to 8 bit?

Thanks.

[zerowalker]

Not any expert but will from my understanding when i myself looked at this a while ago it's pretty much like this.

1: You need a compatible cable, i think Displayport is the only one.
2: You need a compatible card, mostly it's Only professional non-gaming cards, but apparently newer cards (perhaps not all?) include this, not sure if it needs some hack though.
3: The monitor needs support at well, which is Very Rare, and i think it's pretty much only available in Professional monitors aimed for Photo processing.

So my guess would be, your card is not compatible.
Can't say anything about the TV, but i am almost certain it's not compatible with 10bit, there should be no reason for it to support it.
And as you have DVI/HDMI there is no way to carry that information anyway (i think).

Take what i have written with a grain of salt, i may be wrong, but hopefully it's somewhat correct.

[hello_hello]

Thanks for the input. From the research I've done...... and why I'm confused when it comes to the video card.....

According to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_Series#Display_capabilities
The GeForce 8 series supports 10-bit per channel display output, up from 8-bit on previous NVIDIA cards.

From Nvidia:
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3011/~/10-bit-per-color-support-on-nvidia-geforce-gpus
NVIDIA Geforce graphics cards have offered 10-bit per color out to a full screen Direct X surface since the Geforce 200 series GPUs. Due to the way most applications use traditional Windows API functions to create the application UI and viewport display, this method is not used for professional applications such as Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Photoshop.

So the second sentence seems to apply only to applications such as Photoshop, but maybe not to video? Although I'm sure the GeForce 200 series was after the 8000 series, which seems to contradict Wikiepedia in reference to the 8000 series being the first to support 10 bit.

Or are "10 bit per channel" and "10 bit per colour" different beasts?

I was probably wrong regarding my TV supporting 10 bit. I can't find any mention of "deep colour" and my particular model either. I found the article regarding other Samsung Plasmas of a similar vintage.... the one I thought referred to 10 bit, but I was mistaken. It referred to 10 pt calibration, not 10 bit.
A little more research indicates the "native" colour option might some sort of Samsung colour enhancing thing, but it's probably not 10 bit as such. The "auto" option is described as "setting the colour range depending on the input source" but even that's fairly ambiguous. Unless you speak fluent Samsung.....

So you're probably correct and I'm in an 8 bit world. Not that I care. The 10 bit question was really just out of curiosity. All the video I have is 8 bit and I plan to stick with 8 bit encoding for the foreseeable future.

Cheers.

[huhn]

1: You need a compatible cable, i think Displayport is the only one.
hdmi can go up to 12 bit. 10 bit for sure

2: You need a compatible card, mostly it's Only professional non-gaming cards, but apparently newer cards (perhaps not all?) include this, not sure if it needs some hack though.
every AMD and NVIDIA card these days can send 10 or even 12 bit over HDMI they need a special directx 10 or 11 fullscreen surface. windows is working in 8 bit so not easy to get true 10 bit out of windows.
not 100 % sue but EVR CP can output true 10 bit in fullscreen mode but can't get 10 bit in that is broken.
I don't think a 8600 can do this.

3: The monitor needs support at well, which is Very Rare, and i think it's pretty much only available in Professional monitors aimed for Photo processing.
input and displaying are to different things my TV excepts 12 bit from my AMD GPU of it is a 8 bit display.
some older samsung have a 10 bit panel.

@hello_hello
I can decode 10 bit video and MadVR shows it as a 10 bit output (Ctrl+J), but I assume that's only how it's being decoded. What happens from there..... renderer-video card-display etc..... I have no idea. Would the video card convert it to 8 bit?

madVR can except 10 bit input but it always output 8 bit or lower. by default it outputs 8 bit dithered so it makes use of the 10 bit input.

in short 10 bit on windows is not going to happen any time soon. hardware is there even displays but windows is the problem.

maybe windows 9 THRESHOLD can run native in 10 bit native, maybe...

[hello_hello]

madVR can except 10 bit input but it always output 8 bit or lower. by default it outputs 8 bit dithered so it makes use of the 10 bit input.

Thanks for the info. Am I understanding this correctly? Are you saying MadVR outputs 8 bit but can dither it up to 10 bit, so to speak?

What's happening when MadVR displays this for 10 bit video?

10 bit, 4:2:0 -> P010, 10 bit, 4:2:0

That'd be for a 10 bit video and I assume P010 refers to LAV decoding as 10 bit (in the case of MPC-HC, at least). I just don't quite understand what happens from there. I've tried comparing MadVR to EVR but EVR doesn't seem to display the same info. All I ever see for EVR is "Mixer Output: RGB32".

One other question while I'm thinking about it. Does VGA have a bitdepth? I have this PC connected to a CRT monitor as well as the TV and that caused me to wonder.....

[mariush]

He said madVR accepts at its input 10bit video, but it outputs 8 bit or lower all the time. RGB32 is 8bit per color.

VGA is worse in quality compared to digital outputs. It's analogue signal.. the DAC used by video card to convert the digital stuff to analogue is not that great. Unlikely to be capable of 10bit.

[hello_hello]

Ah.... I think I misread huhn's post the first time.

Thanks for the info!

I figured VGA would probably only be 8 bit, but I'd hate to make an incorrect assumption for want of asking.

I don't find VGA quality to be all that bad, although admittedly it's fairly dependant on the quality of the VGA cable and it seems decent cables are hard to find new these days. I bought a couple a year or so ago and the difference between the new cables and the old ones was extremely obvious, so I returned them for a refund.

Comparing VGA and HDMI at 1080p using my video card and TV, VGA tends to have a little less fine picture detail, and usually there's a fraction less noise (I assume some of the high frequency noise is lost during the trip down the VGA cable). If I enable my TV's noise filtering on the HDMI input (minimum level), which I normally don't, the VGA and HDMI inputs look quite similar.