DPL 4K Certification for 4K 18G Deep Color and the Significance of 18 Gbps Throughput
Cables matter when viewing 4K video
Contrary to popular belief, not all HDMI 2.0b cables are alike. The ARQUUS W73 and XENOS W30 obtained the highest level of certification from DPL Labs for 4K 18G Deep Color! This ensures that even at 4k 60 FPS, you will be able to access a depth of color ranges commonly referred to as Deep Color. Deep Color is part of the HDR (or HDR10) spec. In short, this means with the wrong cables, you won’t be able to take advantage of HDR while consuming 4K content.
Deep Color by definition means anything over 8bits of color depth over HDMI. The more color depth you have, the more true-to-life the colors are. The graphic below is a simple illustration of the difference between 8bit color depth and 24bit.
The image below shows “color banding” in the sky. Notice the not-so-subtle transition from an orangish sky to a blue sky in the picture below.
If you’ve ever watched a dark scene on television and were not able to discern what was going on, it may have been because of the lack of color depth displayed.
With “standard” 4k HDMI 2.0 cables you might be restricted in terms of frame rate, color sampling (pixels with color channels), and color depth. See chart below by DPL Labs for more details.
As you can see above, a standard 4K HDMI 2.0 cable at best can handle 4k video @ 60 fps with 4:2:0 color sampling (a method of data compression, 4:4:4 indicates no compression) at an 8-bit color depth. The higher the resolution, the less the color sampling, and the greater the color depth, the more bandwidth required. The ARQUUS W73 and XENOS W30 maxes out the 2.0b standard at ~18 Gbps for either 4K60Hz @ 8-bit 4:4:4 or 12-bit 4:2:2. They are HDMI 2.0b cables that don’t require compromise.