I don’t know the specs. Assume 1920x1080 pixels. How many color options are there per pixel? Would you just multiply that number by 1920*1080 and that gives the total number of potential images on an HDTV screen?
I think 24 bit is about 16 million potential colors.
Do you just multiply those 3 numbers together to get the finite number of images possible on an HDTV?
I’m not sure what the question is. Isn’t every pixel only one colour to begin with? It’s the toggling on and off of those individual pixels that makes the resultant colour.
Most monitors can display 24-bit color, or 16,777,216 different colors. It’s not just multiplying that with the resolution because that’d only give you entire screens of one color at a time. It’s actually 16,777,216 to the power of 1920x1080… some insanely big number, approximately 2 with 15 million zeroes after it.
Previous thread on the topic:
No, that’s not correct.
Each pixel is created out of three (or more) sub-pixels that have Red, Green, and Blue filters in front of them. Each sub-pixel can go from (in theory) 0% light transmission to 100% in steps of .39% (this is actually oversimplified, but it’s close - for an 8-bit/color system).
ETA: Ninja’d
No, it’d be a lot more than that. Each pixel has 16.8 million possible color values (assuming RGB, 256 values for each R,G,B). So if you have one pixel, you have just under 16.8 million distinct values. For two pixels, you have 16.8 million^2. For three pixels, 16.8 million^3. And so on. So I believe the answer would be 256^3^(1920*1080), or 16,777,217^2,073,600, right?
nm – ninja’ed
Then that’s different from CRT technology. I guess I haven’t kept up with the times.
There’s a bit of ambiguity around the word “pixel”.
In a 24-bit digital image, a pixel can have a combination of RGB values, each from 0 to 255.
However, to display that pixel on a physical device, monitors have their own “pixels” – in the case of a Full HDTV, that’s 1920*1080 of them. Each of these pixels has 3 or more subpixels (usually RGB), and the TV interprets the digital image pixel color to determine what combination of subpixels to activate for that TV pixel.
Even CRT technology allowed variable-intensity pixels.
The electron beam was modulated to simulate the phosphors from full off to full bright.
When I was studying this in college, a pixel was either R, G, or B. I have never heard of subpixels. I’m pretty sure what I learned was correct in the early 80s, but I assume things have changed.
This has never been true for monitors, AFAIK.
Some old printing technologies (early inkjets) had fixed-sized dots, so it would be true for those.
They ARE technically “pixels”, but people colloquially call them sub-pixels because otherwise it gets confusing. It’s not really an official term, from what I understand, but helps impart clarity when discussing TV pixels vs image pixels that don’t live in physical space. Otherwise 1920x1080 “pixels”, once divided by RGB colors, would be very little actual screen real estate.
It gets even more confusing when digital camera pixels are once again different from display device pixels, sometimes layering them in weird arrangements or having multiple green sub-pixels per pixel, etc.
Camera sensors sort of count each color element as a pixel. taking 101 by 101 matrix of one color sensor elements the camera converts it to a 100 by 100 array of pixels each with a red, green and blue value to it.
scroll down to Bayer demosaicing.
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-sensors.htm
Monitors in the early 80s were monochrome. Yep, pixels were the individual colour dots. That’s how I learned it. Maybe my professor was wrong. He also believed that there was no way that LCD displays could be quick enough to be used to display video-quality images.
beowulff’s description is also accurate for CRTs, except for the use of the word “filter” doesn’t really apply there. Here’s an image of (one type of) a super zoomed-in CRT monitor. This letter would probably appear white to you at normal viewing. The positions of a R,G,B triplet are fixed, but not all 3 have to be “on.”
The theoretic maximum field combinations are covered above, but the functional maximum is probably lower due to metemerism.
