Is defined by some standard to be able to be declared "4K", or is it just what seems to be happening because all/most of the panel makers just threw it in?
The video is supposed to be encoded in Rec 2020. The panel is what it is. TV manufacturers negotiated to get a green primary close to what they could manufacture but really the panel is likely to be a little different and be color managed.
My main monitor is a Dell that is very close to Adobe RGB which is great for print work because it covers the CYMK gamut well.
I am interested in getting something better but it is not so clear to me that you can really get a Rec 2020 computer monitor other than a crazy expensive monitor from Dolby. Maybe I gotta download a bunch of monitor profiles so I can know what various monitors really support as I’ve already developed a system for simulating how channel separation works for red-cyan stereograms even on monitors I don’t have.
A better TV has been on the agenda too except somehow people keep giving me free TVs on the railing edge such as a Walmart TV which had great sound (better than many sound bars) that had the backlight burn out, then I got gifted a Samsung which sucks but is working fine in my TV nook downstairs. My main AV room doesn’t have room for anything bigger than what I’ve got unless I move everything which I don’t have a good plan for…
> The video is supposed to be encoded in Rec 2020. The panel is what it is.
Worth noting that it is physically impossible for current flat panel displays to have full coverage of rec.2020, because the spectral width of each primary is too wide with current flat display tech (LED, LCD, etc.)
Full rec.2020 coverage requires the use of lasers, so you can get a ~spectrally pure primary.
My prediction is that the next big move in display tech after 8K will be a transition from LCD/LED to VCSELs or some other teeny laser pixel, so they can advertise full rec.2020 coverage.
After that, maybe tunable quantum dot lasers so they can get full CIE 1931 coverage, but that's probably at least 15-20 years away.
The panels with quantum dots can theoretically reach an about 97% coverage of the Rec. 2020 color space, which should be enough for most purposes.
There are many commercial models which exceed a 90% coverage of the Rec. 2020 color space. However they are expensive, so they are used mostly in high-end TV-sets and only seldom in expensive computer monitors.
The only difference between Adobe RGB and the PAL/SECAM color TV-sets from 1970 is in the primary green color, which is much more pure in Adobe RGB and it indeed makes Adobe RGB great for print work.
On the other hand, for viewing images on monitors, Adobe RGB is not a desirable color space. The worst primary color of PAL/SECAM and of the closely related SMPTE C and Rec. 709 color spaces is the primary red color.
While in the blue and green regions the colors that are not representable in PAL/SECAM/SMPTE C/Rec. 709 can be represented by reducing their saturation, in the red corner, from purple to yellow, besides colors that can be represented by reducing their saturation there are also colors that can be represented only by reducing both their saturation and their brightness.
Moreover, in the red corner, from yellow to purple, there are many frequently encountered objects with such saturated and bright colors, e.g. flowers, fruits and clothes.
So the really noticeable improvement in color reproduction on monitors is when passing from PAL/SECAM/SMPTE C/Rec. 709/Adobe RGB to monitors with DCI-P3 primary colors.
DCI-P3 keeps the primary blue of PAL/SECAM, but it has much better primary red and primary green colors. The green is not as good as that of Adobe RGB, but the better red provides a much more visible improvement.
Many relatively cheap monitors, e.g. all my Dell monitors, have a menu option to replace the default sRGB color space with the "DCI-P3" color space (and they can display almost 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut). On any such monitors, by "DCI-P3" is meant the Apple Display P3 color space, i.e. DCI-P3 primary colors combined with the PAL/SECAM D65 white and with the sRGB non-linear transfer function.
In cheap monitors, the DCI-P3 color gamut with 10 bit per color component is the best that can be found. The monitors whose color gamut is a larger fraction of the Rec. 2020 color space are expensive, because they normally must use quantum dots or OLED or both.
Nevertheless, as the output color space for any high-quality photograph, the Rec. 2020 color space is preferable, even if most people who would look at the photograph now would clip its color gamut to the sRGB or DCI-P3 of their monitors. However those who have better monitors, whose numbers will be increasing in the future, will be able to see any color that can be displayed by their monitors, without having the quality of the photograph already degraded by whoever has processed it.
ITU-R UHDTV Standard, the mainstream 4K TV standard, use Rec 2020.
In theory you can use any color primaries with any video resolution in computer (NOT on TV as those normally only support mainstream standard) as long as the the color space metadata is properly set, but in practise, some softwares ignore the metadata or the metadata got lost in the video processing chain. So in general, 4K video use Rec 2020, HD/FHD use Rec 709, and SD use Rec 601, for maximum compatibility.
My main monitor is a Dell that is very close to Adobe RGB which is great for print work because it covers the CYMK gamut well.
I am interested in getting something better but it is not so clear to me that you can really get a Rec 2020 computer monitor other than a crazy expensive monitor from Dolby. Maybe I gotta download a bunch of monitor profiles so I can know what various monitors really support as I’ve already developed a system for simulating how channel separation works for red-cyan stereograms even on monitors I don’t have.
A better TV has been on the agenda too except somehow people keep giving me free TVs on the railing edge such as a Walmart TV which had great sound (better than many sound bars) that had the backlight burn out, then I got gifted a Samsung which sucks but is working fine in my TV nook downstairs. My main AV room doesn’t have room for anything bigger than what I’ve got unless I move everything which I don’t have a good plan for…