A 2012 recommendation fixed UHD's color primaries on paper

The image

The document is Recommendation ITU-R BT.2020, published in August 2012 and titled Parameter values for ultra-high-definition television systems for production and international programme exchange. It is a broadcasting-standard text, not an image: tables of numbers describing a color space rather than any picture rendered inside it. The ITU's own recommendation index page, retrieved on 16 September 2026, records that the document has since been revised twice, most recently in 2015.

What the documents show

The 2012 text specifies exact CIE 1931 chromaticity coordinates for three primaries and a reference white: red at 0.708, 0.292; green at 0.170, 0.797; blue at 0.131, 0.046; and a D65 white point at 0.3127, 0.3290. It also specifies a non-linear transfer function with stated constants for 10-bit and 12-bit signal formats. The document defines these values for two target UHDTV image system resolutions and states that the R'G'B' signal format may be used for programme exchange when the best quality programme production is of primary importance. The recommendation is a set of defined reference values for production and exchange; it does not itself describe or certify the color capability of any manufactured display, camera or projector.

Production context

The following is an editorial inference. Publishing exact numerical primaries lets a camera or display manufacturer, or a colorist choosing a working color space, target a common reference rather than an approximate or proprietary gamut, the kind of interoperability problem a broadcast standard exists to solve rather than a claim about any single product's actual color output.

Reference versus imitation

The recommendation defines a gamut on paper; stating that a particular consumer television or a specific production covers or meets BT.2020 requires a separate, measured claim about that device or master, which this document does not supply and does not claim to supply for any product. Citing BT.2020 correctly means citing a defined coordinate space, not asserting that any given screen reproduces it in full.

• Is a device or master described as reaching BT.2020's defined primaries, or only as working within a BT.2020-referenced pipeline?
• Does the citation specify which revision of BT.2020 is meant, given that the recommendation has been updated since 2012?
• Is a claimed color gamut distinguished from the transfer function and bit-depth values the same recommendation also specifies?

What the 2012 recommendation and its revision history establish is a defined, numerically exact color space intended for production and exchange. They do not establish, on their own, that any camera, master or display reproduces that space in practice.