In computer graphics, color depth or bit depth is the number of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel in a bitmapped image or video frame buffer. This concept is usually quantified as bits per pixel (bpp), which specifies the number of bits used. Color depth is only one aspect of color representation, expressing how finely levels of color can be expressed (a.k.a. color precision) ; the other aspect is how broad a range of colors can be expressed (the gamut). The definition of both color precision and gamut is accomplished with a color encoding specification which assigns a digital code value to a location in a color space.
Legacy Analog TVs, whether color or monochrome, use continuous voltage signals which do not have a fixed number of different intensities, although the signals are subject to noise introduced in transmission.
Read more about Color Depth: Indexed Color, Direct Color, Industry Support
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