PS3 RGB vs. YCbCr

[Xan]

I recently got a PS3 and hooked it up to my Eizo FS2333 via HDMI. The monitor has seperate settings for RGB limited and full; setting both the PS3 and the monitor to full results in better colors, not surprisingly. However, I've read that at least for movies, the colors are encoded in YCbCr and both the PS3 and the monitor should be set to that to avoid that one "unnecessary" conversion to RGB. I only intend to play games on the console though, am I best off with RGB full then?

[BazookaBen]

Yeah, for monitors always play on full. I don't know anything about the special rules for Blu-ray movies though.

[matrigs]

http://www.avsforum.com/t/886029/ps3-blu-ray-settings

so much for movies.

for games it comes down to personal preference. if you like the oversaturade colours then go for it.

[Lawfer]

Yeah, for monitors always play on full. I don't know anything about the special rules for Blu-ray movies though.

Monitors? You mean like on computers? For info Nvidia it is impossible to use "Full" mode while connected with HDMI.

Also if you are playing on a TV using a Playstation 3, the TV would need to support "Full" mode as well, otherwise if you set the Playstation 3 to "Full" or the Xbox 360 to "Expanded" you would just get crushed blacks.

[BazookaBen]

Monitors? You mean like on computers?

Yeah, computer monitors. In my understanding most of them are permanently in full mode. For the ones with the option, I see no reason not to go full.

[ZellSF]

Yeah, for monitors always play on full. I don't know anything about the special rules for Blu-ray movies though.

Monitors? You mean like on computers? For info Nvidia it is impossible to use "Full" mode while connected with HDMI.

It's possible: http://blog.metaclassofnil.com/?p=83 (not really very relevant, just have to point out misinformation).

One of the few areas where ATI sucks less than Nvidia, color range is easily configurable per output.

[Xan]

for games it comes down to personal preference. if you like the oversaturade colours then go for it.

Seeing as the G70-based GPU in PS3 is obviously capable of outputting full RGB I don't see why the colors should be oversatured. Unless the games are still designed with the limited range in mind, seeing as most (cheap?) TVs support only that; but even then, the colors come off as just right to me on my monitor...

AFAIR the Xbox 360 can be actually set to output games in YCbCr. I suppose this could be beneficial for TVs which expect YCbCr as it moves that one RGB->YCbCr conversion from the TV to the console itself. Maybe Sony didn't include that because they thought it would lead to somewhat lower quality? I've heard that on the PS2 RGB still gives slightly better colors than component, even though the games are all designed for 16-235.

About the problem with Nvidia cards and HDMI, I believe at this point they fixed it in the driver.