Chromatic Subsampling for Display of Color Images

The amount of information required to store color images is immense. For a typical 1024×1024 pixel color image, 8 bits each of R, G, and B data are usually stored (to avoid luminance or chromatic contouring artifacts), which adds up to 3 Mbytes per picture. This large size is problematic in several ways: framebuffer memory is still expensive; large framebuffers are technically more difficult to engineer (more boards, more heat); disk storage capabilities become swamped; the time required to transmit a picture from disk to terminal, or between network sites, is unacceptable.