World Cup Follow-up (Part 2)

Posted on July 18, 2018 by Jeff Yurek

After much internet searching and a few cancelled deliveries we finally have our Croatia jersey! A bit too late for the big game but still thought it would be interesting to take a look at the data for both team jerseys:

France vs Croatia jerseys in a 2018 World Cup-themed chromaticity shootout

Like France, Croatia’s jersey happens to fall just inside the BT.709 color gamut. Going back to our original top 10 teams post, it seems like most of the other possible finals matchups would have resulted in a wider color gamut (we did model the Croatian flag red as outside 709).

An interesting follow-up, perhaps for 2022, would be to look at goalie jerseys as well. Goalies wore some of the wildest colors of the competition. France’s Hugo Lorris, for example, wore a super saturated yellow-green for the final match that looked a bit like the tennis ball color we measured recently.

World Cup Follow-up (Part 1)

Posted on July 13, 2018 by Jeff Yurek

A few weeks ago I kicked off the World Cup with a survey of the top 10 ranked country’s colors. At the time, it was impractical to acquire and measure actual jerseys for each World Cup team (32 total) so I limited the survey to top 10 teams and used publicly available data on flag colors under the assumption that jerseys would likely track closely with flags.

We’re now down to just two teams so, as promised, I’m back to share some measured data from team jerseys. There is, however, a small issue… Croatia jerseys are sold out everywhere! Probably because it is the first time Croatia has entered the World Cup finals. Luckily, I’ve got one on back-order and will follow-up with yet another update next week, after the big game.

In the meantime, let’s take a quick look at the measured data we do have for France.

France World Cup 2018 Jersey Colors plotted in CIE 1931

The plot above shows u’v’ coordinates for the three most interesting colors on France’s World Cup jersey: dark blue, light blue and the small pop of red from the back of the collar. As you can see in the plot above these colors actually fall just inside the BT.709 color gamut used for HDTV broadcast. They’re right on the edge though so, if you are watching in HD, you may want to look at having your TV calibrated before the big game for an optimal experience.

The other question that I had after the first post was whether or not the flag data would truly correlate to measured jerseys. In the chart below, I’ve plotted flag data from the original post against new measured data and it seems like my hypothesis held up. At least in the case of France, team colors were reasonably close to flag colors.

Looking forward to providing an update next week on Croatia’s bright red home jersey. In the meantime, may the best team win!

2018 World Cup: Watching in 4K HDR makes a difference

Posted on June 14, 2018 by Jeff Yurek

Color survey of the Top 10 World Cup countries for 2018

The 2018 World Cup is officially underway with a blowout victory for host country Russia today.

Over the next month, an estimated 3.4 billion (according to GlobalWebIndex) soccer fans will have an opportunity to watch World Cup games in 4K resolution with High Dynamic Range (HDR) and a wider palette of colors. This means the experience of watching the games on TV will be much closer to being at the stadium in person.

It’s likely to make a big difference. The World Cup is one of the most colorful sporting events on TV with teams from 32 countries, thousands of flag-waving fans and, of course, wildly colorful cleats.

To get a sense of how impactful the change from HDTV to 4K HDR might be for World Cup soccer, I did a quick survey of the country colors for the 2018 World Cup’s top 10 teams according to CBS Sports’ most recent ranking.

Color gamut of the 2018 World Cup’s top 10 countries.

With a mix of publicly available data and a little math, I was able to plot the dominant flag colors for the top 10 World Cup countries into the CIE 1931 color space (if you are new to reading color space charts, check out our primer here). Note that I limited the survey to flag colors since data on 2018 uniforms was incomplete and flag colors seem to be featured on most uniforms. I’ve also only plotted the two most dominant or most ‘colorful’ colors, ignoring blacks, whites and grays.

The results were a little bit surprising. Based on this data, just two teams entire flags – Argentina and France – can be accurately displayed on a standard HDTV with the BT.709 color gamut. This means fans with wide color gamut sets will finally be able to see their county’s colors in their full glory when viewing a 4K HDR broadcast.

It’s a great example of the power of HDR and wide color gamut to deliver a lifelike experience that really makes you feel like you are there in the stands in Russia sitting next to a crazy face-painted super-fan waving a flag in support of his country (only without the obstructed view from that flag).

How to watch the World Cup in 4K HDR

If you have a 4K HDR-capable set, the World Cup is available to watch in 4K HDR from a variety of sources around the world this year. Here in the US, TV maker Hisense is making 4K HDR games available for streaming in a partnership with Fox while DirecTV, DISH and Comcast are all offering broadcast options.

For a full run-down of all the options I recommend Johnny Archer’s thorough review over at Forbes. He breaks it down by country and gets covers the nitty-gritty differences in broadcast features from each of the providers.

Stay Tuned…

I’ll plan to update this with measured data from actual team uniforms once the field has narrowed a bit more in the semi-final or final rounds.

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