Best Output Color Format In The Nvidia Control Panel For 4K And HDR ...

RGB is 8 bit per color, 16 million colors

YCbCr  is same thing as RGB, but instead of colors you have Y = Brightness (Luminance), Chroma Blue and Chroma Red (color information) ... a formula is used to determine red, green and blue from these 3.

4:4:4 means that for every pixel, the monitor receives red,green and blue , or ycbcr information .. 3 x 8 bits or 3 x 10 bits or 3 x 12 bits

4:2:2 and 4:2:0 means that the video cards makes groups of 4 pixels, sends the brightness information for each pixel untouched, but makes an average of the color information for those 4 pixels and sends only 1 or 2 values for the whole group... so instead of 4 Cb , only 1-2 Cb values are sent, or only 1-2 Cr values.

Human eyes are much more sensitive to light, but less sensitive to variations in color, so in most situations you wouldn't notice that averaging.

 

Bluray movies, Youtube content etc is compressed using YCbCr 4:2:0

Some professional recording equipment records in YCbCr 4:2:2 

 

So 12 bit > 10 bit > 8 bit   RGB = YCbCr 4:4:4  > YCbCr 4:2:2 > YCbCr 4:2:0

 

YCbCr 4:2:0 is acceptable for watching movies, sometimes ok for playing games (there's issues with tiny text and some colors like intense reds being affected by the conversion from 4:4:4 to 4:2:0)

 

If you can do 10 bit, I'd say try it out. I wouldn't bother with 12 bit ... few games are even aware and support it, and your tv is probably not calibrated well enough that having 12 bit would make a difference.

Your TV is probably 8bit+FRC anyway, making it a 10 bit panel.

 

edit :  

Read your original message again.  YCbCr 4:2:0 is the worst option, and it's not worth using it just for 12bit, because all the video content is 8 bit or 10 bit... you'd get no quality increase forcing 12 bit.

I'd suggest going with YCbCr 4:2:2 10 bit  or YCbCr 4:4:4 / RGB 8 bit.

 

Check the TV menus and see if there's some "PC mode" or "Raw Input" or whatever, which may allow you to configure YCbCr 4:4:4 10 bit, or RGB 10 bit. That would be the best.  It may be a hdmi 2.0 limitation here, not giving you that format.