This week I’m kicking off a new series of posts that set out to answer a simple question:
“Can an HDTV accurately reproduce these colors?”
I’m calling the new weekly feature “Wide Color Gamut Wednesday” or #WideColorWednesday in social media speak. Each week we will analyze a new wide color gamut image and post the results to our @dot_color Twitter feed.
In the process, I think we’ll find that “wide gamut” colors – colors that fall outside the BT.709 color gamut used by HDTVs – are actually fairly common beyond classic examples like Brazilian tree frogs or Coca Cola cans. In fact, in our first test, we found a simple image of spring flowers, taken in Rochester, NY, contained mostly colors that fall outside the BT.709 gamut.

62.5% of the colors in this springtime flowers image fall outside the BT.709 color gamut used by HDTVs #WideGamutWednesday
I thought it would be helpful to write up the first #WideColorWednesday image as a blog post with some background on the process used to create these images.