color depth: In digital video technology, color depth is the number of bits with which the intensity levels per primary color (RGB) are encoded. You have to know that each bit can only encode two states, but each additional one in combination doubles the number. With the typical color depth of 8 bits, 256 levels per color can theoretically be differentiated, resulting in over 16 million colors that are often heard; because these are determined by multiplying all possible levels over all primary colors, that is 256 x 256 x 256 equal to greater than 16 million.
On DVD and Blu-Ray becomes the color model Ycbcr used for color coding, where 256 of these 32 states per basic color were reserved for digital adjustments. Every display needs one headroom e.g. B. for scaling the image to the physical Resolution. Theoretically, with 224 to the power of 3, there are still more than 11 million displayable "colors". However, with this specification, it is often forgotten that the overall brightness of an image is also hidden in these "colors", which actually only corresponds to 224 real gray levels (one color depth).