Rec. 2020

The Colors of the Future

ITU-R Recommendation BT.2020, or Rec. 2020, is the standard that defines the various aspects of Ultra High Definition television, including resolution (4K and 8K) and, most significantly, a vastly expanded color space. It is the successor to the Rec. 709 standard that defined the world of HD. The primary goal of Rec. 2020 is to allow for a much more vibrant and realistic color reproduction, getting closer to the full spectrum of color that the human eye can perceive.

A Wider Gamut

The most important feature of Rec. 2020 is its significantly wider color gamut. While the Rec. 709 standard for HD could represent about 35.9% of the colors visible to the human eye, the Rec. 2020 gamut covers a massive 75.8%. This allows for the display of much deeper, richer, and more saturated colors—think of a more vivid red of a sports car, a more intense green of a jungle canopy, or the brilliant cyan of a tropical ocean, colors that simply did not exist within the Rec. 709 palette.

A Container for HDR

Currently, no consumer display can reproduce the full Rec. 2020 color gamut. Instead, Rec. 2020 serves as a ‘container’ for modern video content. When you watch a 4K UHD Blu-ray with HDR, the content is delivered within the Rec. 2020 container, and your television will display as much of that wide color gamut as it is physically capable of producing. This makes Rec. 2020 a forward-looking standard, providing the technical roadmap for the video displays of the future.