Also known as “bit depth”, it describes the number of potential values that the encoding of color information in a video signal can have.
Historically, Blu Ray has been 8 bit, which means 256 possible values for red, green and blue.
Ultra-HD Blu Ray is 10 bit, giving 1024 values for RGB.
12 bit color provides 4096 values for RGB.
One important reason that we have moved to a 10 bit system for UHD Blu Ray is to reduce color banding. This is an image defect where bands of color are visible. It’s more important in the UHD world because of the expanded color space and hence the greater color variations.
8bit vs 10bit
