Does Xbox One use RGB Color Space for all output?

The color space setting should usually be set to either Auto or Source.

RGB carries the picture across in the primary colors red, green, and blue. This is what games use.

YCbCr carries the picture across recalculated as luminance and color difference. This is used for video material as it allows the color information to be stored at a lower resolution to help save space. The BT.601 flavor is used for standard
definition, and the BT.709 flavor is used for high definition. Being able to use either flavor regardless of the output resolution is something that is only useful in extremely rare cases. Using BT.601 together with a HD resolution will give inaccurate color
reproduction.

Unlike RGB, YCbCr always uses video range levels and is unaffected by the Reference Levels setting. Your display should however not expect full-range (expanded) video levels when fed YCbCr, unless it has been forced to through a setting (some displays allow
that for whatever reason).

The best starting point is setting the color space to Auto and the reference levels to Standard. This will switch the Xbox 360 between RGB and YCbCr based on the content, and automatically pick the appropriate YCbCr flavor based on output resolution.

All depends on your TV set yet it's recommended to leave the color space setting set to TV (RGB Limited). RGB Limited is the broadcast standard for video content and is intended for use with televisions.

Zacabeb,

You have been very helpful in helping many of us work through the proper HDMI settings for my A/V setup. I have one lingering question about the HDMI Color Space setting:

Why does the X360 even allow for YCbCr output for games? If my understanding is correct, console games, similar to PC, are internally rendered by the GPU in native 8-bit RGB. Unlike video material which is encoded in YCbCr space, both games and the X360
dashboard run in native RGB space. So to avoid any unnecessary processing shouldn't you always have your Xbox 360 set to RGB for games? Otherwise, the native RGB format would be transcoded and resampled to YCbCr, which will then be decoded back to RGB once
it reaches the display device. More conversions = increased opportunity for errors and input lag.

I don't really see any good reason why the X360 would allow for YCbCr output for games. Perhaps they allow for this on the off-chance there is a display that cannot accept RGB signals, though it is my understanding that all HDMI-compliant displays accept
RGB. If there’s an exception, I’m not aware of it.

In contrast, the PS3 only allows games to run in RGB mode; YCbCr is reserved exclusively for BD/DVD playback. If set to YCbCr, the console will auto-switch to RGB when the game flag is detected, and when playing back Blu-rays, you can switch between YCbCr
and RGB.

Thoughts?

Ive been curious why blu ray looks like crap (dull and washed out) regardless of what I set. I have my TV calibrated professionally but it was dialed in using my bluray player under YCbCr. As long as the One uses only the RGB color space blurays will never
look as accurate as it should be. I did however find something out that I notified MS about as I was digging for answers. My receiver tells me the signals it is seeing input and output. I noticed that the xbox One ONLY outputs RGB limited regardless what color
space you choose. If you use PC it is actually compressed into limited and the BTB and WTW is clipped. If your display is set to RGB full you will essentially see 16 shades of the same black. That explains the crushed blacks. Though less noticeable you are
also getting 16 shades of the same white.

Without the option to output straight to YCbCr which to me is preferable since the One is a bluray player, the One is pretty disappointing. I'm leaving it standalone just for games and everything else is going to my receiver. Until MS gets some better display
options added, we may be stuck with calibrating our TVs to RGB limited. Though this will throw off a direct YCbCr signal from a true BD player.

TV content is authored such that a value of 16 (on a 0-255 scale) represents full black and 235 represents full white (this color span = “RGB Limited”) and assumes the viewer's TV has been calibrated to show full black upon receiving a pixel value of 16
and to show full white upon receiving a value of 235. Xbox One is assumed to be connected to a TV (not a PC monitor), and we make our best efforts to optimize video content (movies, TV shows, content authored specific experience for video levels, i.e. "RGB
Limited"), consistent with CE devices.

Switching to RGB Full will cause loss of visual dynamic range on a properly calibrated TV.

Basically, you should always use the TV (RGB Limited) Color Space display setting on Xbox One. All video content (TV shows, Movies, Blu-ray, DVD, etc.) is authored for (RGB Limited). You’ll actually lose visual dynamic range if you select Color Space = PC
(RGB Full).

The "RGB Limited" setting could be named more accurately.'

Note they have now changed the name to RGB Standard and PC RGB. If you use RGB Standard then 99% of your "crushed black" problems will be gone

For more info:
https://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/console/adjust-display-settings