to deliver higher dynamic range and color fidelity avoiding the banding artifacts. A variety of companies supported the proposal which included Ateme, BBC, BSkyB, Cisco, DirecTV, Ericsson, Motorola Mobility, NGCodec, NHK, RAI, ST, SVT, Thomson Video Networks, Technicolor, and ViXS Systems. The Main 10 profile allows for a bit depth of 8 to 10 bits per sample with 4:2:0 chroma sampling. HEVC decoders that conform to the Main 10 profile must be capable of decoding bitstreams made with the following profiles: Main and Main 10. A higher bit depth allows for a greater number of colors. 8 bits per sample allows for 256 shades per primary color (a total of 16.78 million colors) while 10 bits per sample allows for 1024 shades per primary color (a total of 1.07 billion colors). A higher bit depth allows for a smoother transition of color which resolves the problem known as color banding. The Main 10 profile allows for improved video quality since it can support video with a higher bit depth than what is supported by the Main profile. Additionally, in the Main 10 profile 8-bit video can be coded with a higher bit depth of 10 bits, which allows improved coding efficiency compared to the Main profile. Ericsson said the Main 10 profile would bring the benefits of 10 bits per sample video to consumer TV. They also said that for higher resolutions there is no bit rate penalty for encoding video at 10 bits per sample. Imagination Technologies said that 10-bit per sample video would allow for larger color spaces and is required for the Rec. 2020 color space that will be used by UHDTV. They also said the Rec. 2020 color space would drive the widespread adoption of 10-bit-per-sample video. In a PSNR based performance comparison released in April 2013 the Main 10 profile was compared to the Main profile using a set of 3840×2160 10-bit video sequences. The 10-bit video sequences were converted to 8 bits for the Main profile and remained at 10 bits for the Main 10 profile. The reference PSNR was based on the original 10-bit video sequences. In the performance comparison the Main 10 profile provided a 5% bit rate reduction for inter frame video coding compared to the Main profile. The performance comparison states that for the tested video sequences the Main 10 profile outperformed the Main profile. Main Still Picture The Main