[wesk05]

I checked this out again with the Samsung Wonderland clip and The Revenant scene @OlivierQC mentioned earlier. I can see horrible banding with 12-bit YCbCr 4:4:4/4:2:2, but not with 10-bit. I tested on firmware 1.5 using the Media Center app and ZDMC 17.6. I didn't find any difference between the two apps.

What is interesting is, I found almost no difference between 12 & 10 bit outputs in the captured HDMI bitstreams. This to me suggests that the banding that we are seeing is a display specific problem. Displays seem to be processing the 10 and 12 bit signals differently. What I can't explain now is why 12-bit 4:2:2 output from nVIDIA Shield doesn't produce banding, but 12-bit 4:2:2 output from X9S shows banding on my Samsung TV.

Here are some still frame exports. On a computer monitor, you may not notice any difference, but there is some subtle difference. However, they do not show any difference in banding.

Samsung Wonderland Original
Samsung Wonderland 12-bit YCbCr 4:4:4
Samsung Wonderland 10-bit YCbCr 4:4:4

The Revenant Original
The Revenant 12-bit YCbCr 4:4:4
The Revenant 10-bit YCbCr 4:4:4

The frames are slightly different for the Revenant.