Ultra Color Spectrum is Vizio’s marketing name for a wide color gamut: a TV display that can show a wider range of colors than a standard HDTV that follows the Rec. 709 color standard. Vizio introduced the name with its Reference Series Ultra HD TVs and later carried it into the P-Series and M-Series.
What Does Ultra Color Spectrum Mean?
For a Vizio TV, Ultra Color Spectrum means the display was designed to reproduce more colors than a conventional Rec. 709 screen. When Vizio announced its Reference Series in January 2014, it described the feature as widening the color gamut beyond Rec. 709 and supporting true 10-bit color (Vizio press release, 2014).
In practice the name is a shorthand for what the screen can physically show. It is not a setting you switch on, and it does not paint extra colors onto a normal panel.
A color gamut is the set of colors a display or a video standard can represent. Three standards come up most often:
| Standard | Used for | Relative size |
|---|---|---|
| Rec. 709 | Standard HDTV and older HD video | Smallest |
| DCI-P3 | Digital cinema; the color space most HDR content is mastered in | Wider than Rec. 709 |
| Rec. 2020 | Ultra HD / HDR container standard | Wider than DCI-P3 |
Most 4K HDR TVs offer good DCI-P3 coverage, whereas full Rec. 2020 coverage is rare. That’s why, when comparing TVs, you should focus specifically on the DCI-P3 coverage metric. The obvious advantage is color saturation. A screen with a wide color gamut can display deeper and purer shades of red, green, or blue, whereas with a narrower gamut, red shifts toward orange and green appears washed out.
How does Ultra Color Spectrum technology work?
A TV’s color range is primarily determined by its panel, the quality of the materials used, and, to a lesser extent, the backlight. Vizio stated at the time that this feature was made possible by special panel technologies, and the 65-inch model in the Reference series used a quantum dot-based panel.
Thus, Ultra Color Spectrum describes the hardware capabilities. The exact color gamut depended on the model and the display technology used in it.
In the Reference Series models, Vizio combined Ultra Color Spectrum technology with true 10-bit color depth. A 10-bit panel has 1,024 levels for each channel (red, green, and blue), resulting in over a billion color combinations (1,024 × 1,024 × 1,024). In practice, this provides smoother transitions between different shades of a single color.
Technology Ultra Color Spectrum today
Vizio used the Ultra Color Spectrum name in several of its product lines over the years. The technical specifications varied by model, so the term should be considered a marketing name.
Reference Series (CES 2014, Dolby Vision version released in 2015). This was Vizio’s first lineup to feature Ultra Color Spectrum technology, which delivered true 10-bit color. The series was available in 65-inch and 120-inch sizes.
P Series (2017). Vizio used this name to highlight the wide color gamut of these TVs, claiming coverage of more than 95% of the DCI-P3 color space.
M Series (2017). The wide color gamut capabilities of the P Series were carried over to the M Series, which also supported HDR10 and Dolby Vision.
Quantum Color technology replaced Ultra Color Spectrum. Vizio began promoting it around 2018 in TVs equipped with quantum dot technology. Ultra Color Spectrum is no longer part of Vizio’s current marketing strategy.
