Video signal

Chroma subsampling: 4:4:4, 4:2:2, 4:2:0

How much colour detail travels with the picture; 4:4:4 is full colour, 4:2:0 is what discs and streaming use.

What is it?

A video signal is split into brightness (luma, Y) and colour (chroma, Cb/Cr). With 4:4:4 every pixel carries its own colour. 4:2:2 halves colour resolution horizontally, 4:2:0 halves it horizontally and vertically. Because our eyes see brightness far better than colour, 4:2:0 looks nearly identical for films — which is why UHD Blu-ray and all streaming services are 4:2:0. 4:4:4 matters for PC desktops, text and games where fine coloured edges are visible.

Why it matters with the HDfury Vertex²

The HDfury Vertex² passes 4K60 4:4:4 at full 18 Gbps and can convert chroma on the fly: send 4:2:2 12-bit to a projector that dislikes 4:4:4, or 4:2:0 to an HDMI 1.4 device. It also shows the incoming chroma format on the OLED/INFO page — handy to check whether your source really outputs what you set.

How to use it on the Vertex²

Web server → SCALER → Custom scaling → Colour space for TX0/TX1: 'Follow input', 4:4:4, 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 (each in BT.709 or BT.2020). In the EDID tab an 'YCbCr remove' style flag can tell a source to send RGB only. For LLDV (Dolby Vision on HDR10 displays) the signal is always 12-bit 4:2:2.

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