HDMI issue, limited vs full colour range

On various PCs with HDMI outputs, I have noticed that when connected up to monitors the incorrect colour range is selected by the graphics driver (called "quantization range" by Intel and "output dynamic range" by Nvidia).

So the driver by default sends RGB levels capped at 16 to 235 (intended for TVs) instead of 0 to 255, making blacks dark-grey and whites light-grey. I've observed the same issue with Intel drivers. I can manually set it to full range, but every time I update my nVidia graphics drivers it resets HDMI to limited range.

It seems to me that it was a huge mistake to make HDMI a common standard for PC to monitor connections whilst there was no robust method to auto-configure the RGB levels reliably. There must be millions of PCs connected to monitors with HDMI with the output range incorrectly set to limited, resulting in sub-optimal colour reproduction (and worse, it's probably not bad *enough* for them to realise there is an issue). Consumers should never have to fiddle with obscure setting such as these, which were never an issue on DVI or VGA.

yep, ideally use DVI or displayport, I use DVI because my displayport is buggy on my monitor.

Thanks for that Oliver as it prompted me to find out why the blacks on my monitor weren't as black as they used to be.

I'm using Radeon so Google was called upon and came up with Correcting HDMI Colour on Nvidia and AMD GPUs

For some strange reason my card was using YCbCr 4:2:0 and changing it to RGB 4:4:4 restored it to it's former glory.

Once again, thank you!

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

yep, ideally use DVI or displayport, I use DVI because my displayport is buggy on my monitor.

The last monitor I set up had HDMI and Displayport, but the (fairly new) motherboard "only" had VGA, DVI and HDMI, so I opted for an HDMI cable. Intel HD Graphics got the colour range wrong though, unfortunately, hence my rant. Displayport would be the logical choice but it still primarily seems to be reserved for premium monitors and motherboards.

In reply to a post by IanBB:

Once again, thank you!

No problem, unfortunately it's an issue we all have to keep an eye on when using HDMI.