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Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

alinpanaitiu.com

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Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#61

Post by alin23 »

tomtom1337 wrote: post #30
alin23 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not trying to draw HDR content. I want to increase to overall UI brightness (basically, make the brightness of where backlight LEDs go past the software defined limit) I’m testing Apple’s claim of 1000 nits sustained brightness which led many people to believe that they can finally use their laptop in direct sunlight without squinting at the screen. I’m aware of thermal limitations and that even sustained might n…

As a suggestion to help you with your quest - try polarised sunglasses. I used them with my M1 mac this summer quite successfully! The macbook screen is polarised so that the screen light goes straight through the sunglasses, while the surrounding sunlight gets dimmed.

Yes, I noticed that sunglasses help, but they still darken the screen a bit because of their tint.

This is a video I took last summer on this: https://files.alinpanaitiu.com/ff-polarized-macbook.mp4

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#62

Post by phh »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #20

This is hilarious, I imagine a future where you have to pay extra on Netflix to view special content above 500 nits. Apple building in this framework creates brand new business opportunities to take money from customers.

Dolby already implemented that with Dolby Vision IQ

Dolby Vision requires the whole chain to perfectly respect what the content says, both in color and brightness, so if you have a bright film, it'll blind you in the dark. But they now license (I assume for an additional fee) adaptive brightness for Dolby Vision!

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#63

Post by jiggawatts »

grishka wrote: post #43
jiggawatts wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even on 100% brightness, an iPhone Pro 13 shows the "White" text significantly brighter than the background white. Some other interesting observations: - If I zoom in, the over-100%-bright text fades until it blends in with the background. This is expected (OLEDs have higher peak brightness for small areas), but what isn't expected is that it seems to do it in discontinuous steps. - If I go outside into full sunlight…

> Even on 100% brightness, an iPhone Pro 13 shows the "White" text significantly brighter than the background white. Same with the new MBP. The text does fade in over a second or two, and while that happens, I can notice the entire screen flicker ever so slightly. There's clearly some very impressively calibrated interplay between the LCD panel and the backlight going on. > I can understand why the notion programmers…

> And those are assumed to be sRGB anyway.

You mean the 16 EGA colors, right? /s

But more seriously, I was hugely disappointed to see Microsoft unwind their wide-gamut and HDR GUI capabilities that they introduced as far back as Vista while simultaneously Apple is making wide-gamut (Display P3) and HDR standard across all of their devices.

Someone at Microsoft was forward thinking, and now some idiot is undoing that good work just when displays are catching up to the software capabilities.

Sooner or later, Windows will cap framerates at 60 Hz to make sure 120 Hz monitors don't deliver any visible benefit either...

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#64

Post by can16358p »

alin23 wrote: post #52
can16358p wrote: post #50

Is there a technical reason for not enabling going beyond 500 nits when a user just ramps screen brightness? I'm no expert but if that can peak at 1600 nits for a while, it should have been able to sustain 800-1000ish for quite a long time?

I think that long time might not be higher than an hour or two given how much heat the LEDs need to dissipate. A lot of non-technical users might get used to that brightness and then start complaining about their display dimming by itself randomly.

Then why is Apple advertising it as 1000nits sustained?

If it can sustain 1000 nits for HDR content, it can for SDR too. The display isn't going to say "hey it's SDR let me piss them off" and suddenly start dissipating more heat at 1000 nits at SDR compared to HDR after all.

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#65

Post by fulafel »

All the commentary seems to be accepting framing of the situation as a "over max brightness" band you can access when they're just dimming normal content. Brings to mind the business with doubling pixel sizes with the 4K displays and requiring tricks from apps and web content to access the native resolution.

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#66

Post by alin23 »

can16358p wrote: post #64
alin23 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that long time might not be higher than an hour or two given how much heat the LEDs need to dissipate. A lot of non-technical users might get used to that brightness and then start complaining about their display dimming by itself randomly.

Then why is Apple advertising it as 1000nits sustained? If it can sustain 1000 nits for HDR content, it can for SDR too. The display isn't going to say "hey it's SDR let me piss them off" and suddenly start dissipating more heat at 1000 nits at SDR compared to HDR after all.

Well most likely because HDR content doesn’t mean full bright white for extended periods of time.

Even if you watch 8 hours of HDR content, only some of the LEDs will get to peak brightness for small periods of time. That will allow the LEDs to cool down enough to sustain that brightness.

The macOS UI and webpages on the other hand are mostly bright white and that can cause trouble on extended periods of time.

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#67

Post by alin23 »

fulafel wrote: post #65

All the commentary seems to be accepting framing of the situation as a "over max brightness" band you can access when they're just dimming normal content. Brings to mind the business with doubling pixel sizes with the 4K displays and requiring tricks from apps and web content to access the native resolution.

They’re not dimming the SDR content. It is an optical illusion.

The HDR white is actually a lot brighter than the SDR white (which means the LEDs behind those pixels are allowed to go to full brightness).

You can see that effect if you watch this video in Safari on a 2021 MacBook Pro: https://files.alinpanaitiu.com/hdr-test-pattern.webm

Here's an article where the nits value is measured using a calibration device: https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-new-MacBook-Pro-14-only-ma...

The measurement shows that SDR content goes up to 500 nits (which was the peak value of previous MacBook displays as well) while HDR content goes up to 1607 nits.

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#68

Post by fulafel »

alin23 wrote: post #67
fulafel wrote: post #65

All the commentary seems to be accepting framing of the situation as a "over max brightness" band you can access when they're just dimming normal content. Brings to mind the business with doubling pixel sizes with the 4K displays and requiring tricks from apps and web content to access the native resolution.

They’re not dimming the SDR content. It is an optical illusion. The HDR white is actually a lot brighter than the SDR white (which means the LEDs behind those pixels are allowed to go to full brightness). You can see that effect if you watch this video in Safari on a 2021 MacBook Pro: https://files.alinpanaitiu.com/hdr-test-pattern.webm Here's an article where the nits value is measured using a calibration device: ht…

If we have a monitor that has a brightness of 1600 nits, and whites of some content ("sdr") shows up much dimmer, the pixels the monitor is asked to display by the systmes are dimmed relative to max brightness - no?

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#69

Post by harha »

alin23 wrote: post #51
harha wrote: post #31

Does anyone know how to read or measure the brightness of a screen? I wasn’t able to get the reading the author has from Console.app

ioreg usually reports the nits value in some property. On an M1 you can run the following: ioreg -r -c AppleCLCD2 | grep -i nits

at least on the iMac it doesn't work, tried:

  ioreg -l -f | grep nits
which should list properties of all objects, and the display I could find:

  ioreg -r -c AppleBacklightDisplay

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#70

Post by alin23 »

fulafel wrote: post #68
alin23 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re not dimming the SDR content. It is an optical illusion. The HDR white is actually a lot brighter than the SDR white (which means the LEDs behind those pixels are allowed to go to full brightness). You can see that effect if you watch this video in Safari on a 2021 MacBook Pro: https://files.alinpanaitiu.com/hdr-test-pattern.webm Here's an article where the nits value is measured using a calibration device: ht…

If we have a monitor that has a brightness of 1600 nits, and whites of some content ("sdr") shows up much dimmer, the pixels the monitor is asked to display by the systmes are dimmed relative to max brightness - no?

Yes, that’s another way of putting it.

But people usually look at this, relative to previous displays, not relative to peak brightness (since the peak brightness is not achievable for prolonged periods of time because of overheating)

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