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What is HDR, anyway?

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Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#121

Post by babypuncher »

aidenn0 wrote: post #62

> A big problem is that it costs the TV, Film, and Photography industries billions of dollars (and a bajillion hours of work) to upgrade their infrastructure. For context, it took well over a decade for HDTV to reach critical mass. This is also true for consumers. I don't own a single 4k or HDR display. I probably won't own an HDR display until my TV dies, and I probably won't own a 4k display until I replace my work…

Pretty much any display you can buy today will be HDR capable, though that doesn't mean much.

I think the industry is strangling itself putting "DisplayHDR 400" certification on edgelit/backlit LCD displays. In order for HDR to look "good" you either need high resolution full array local dimming backlighting (which still isn't perfect), or a panel type that doesn't use any kind of backlighting like OLED.

Viewing HDR content on these cheap LCDs often looks worse than SDR content. You still get the wider color gamut, but the contrast just isn't there. Local dimming often loses all detail in shadows whenever there is something bright on the screen.

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#122

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

colechristensen wrote: post #76
reaperducer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also true for consumers. I don't own a single 4k or HDR display. I probably won't own an HDR display until my TV dies, and I probably won't own a 4k display until I replace my work screen, at which point I'll also replace one of my home screens so I can remote into it without scaling. People in the HN echo chamber over-estimate hardware adoption rates. For example, there are millions of people who went straig…

>there are millions of people who went straight from CDs to streaming, without hitting the iPod era Who? There was about a decade there where everyone who had the slightest interest in music had an mp3 player of some kind, at least in the 15-30 age bracket.

I imagine this depends a LOT on your specific age and what you were doing in the 00's when MP3 player usage peaked.

I finished high school in 2001 and didn't immediately go to college, so I just didn't have a need for a personal music player anymore. I was nearly always at home or at work, and I drove a car that actually had an MP3 CD player. I felt no need to get an iPod.

In 2009, I started going to college, but then also got my first smartphone, the Motorola Droid, which acted as my portable MP3 player for when I was studying in the library or taking mass transit.

If you were going to school or taking mass transit in the middle of the '00s, then you were probably more likely to have a dedicated MP3 player.

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#123

Post by dahart »

It seems like a mistake to lump HDR capture, HDR formats and HDR display together, these are very different things. The claim that Ansel Adams used HDR is super likely to cause confusion, and isn’t particularly accurate.

We’ve had HDR formats and HDR capture and edit workflows since long before HDR displays. The big benefit of HDR capture & formats is that your “negative” doesn’t clip super bright colors and doesn’t lose color resolution in super dark color. As a photographer, with HDR you can re-expose the image when you display/print it, where previously that wasn’t possible. Previously when you took a photo, if you over-exposed it or under-exposed it, you were stuck with what you got. Capturing HDR gives the photographer one degree of extra freedom, allowing them to adjust exposure after the fact. Ansel Adams wasn’t using HDR in the same sense we’re talking about, he was just really good at capturing the right exposure for his medium without needing to adjust it later. There is a very valid argument to be made for doing the work up-front to capture what you’re after, but ignoring that for a moment, it is simply not possible to re-expose Adams’ negatives to reveal color detail he didn’t capture. That’s why he’s not using HDR, and why saying he is will only further muddy the water.

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#124

Post by simoncion »

esperent wrote: post #11
the__alchemist wrote: post #4

So, HN, are HDR monitors worth it? I remember ~10 years ago delaying my monitor purchase for the HDR one that was right around the corner, but never (in my purchasing scope) became available. Time for another look? The utility of HDR (as described in the article) is without question. It's amazing looking at an outdoors (or indoors with windows) scene with your Mk-1 eyeballs, then taking a photo and looking at it on a…

I think it depends on the screen and also what you use it for. My OLED is unusable for normal work in HDR because it's designed around only a small portion of the screen being at max brightness - reasonable for a game or movie, but the result is that a small window with white background will look really bright, but if I maximize it, it'll look washed out, grey not white. Also the maximum brightness isn't even that br…

> ...the most serious of which was the discovery that you can no longer just screenshot something and expect it to look the same on someone else's computer.

To be pedantic, this has always been the case... Who the hell knows what bonkers "color enhancement" your recipient has going on on their end?

But (more seriously) it's very, very stupid that most systems out there will ignore color profile data embedded in pictures (and many video players ignore the same in videos [0]). It's quite possible to tone-map HDR stuff so it looks reasonable on SDR displays, but color management is like accessibility in that nearly noone who's in charge of paying for software development appears to give any shits about it.

[0] A notable exception to this is MPV. I can't recommend this video player highly enough.

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#125

Post by babypuncher »

reaperducer wrote: post #70
aidenn0 wrote: post #62

> A big problem is that it costs the TV, Film, and Photography industries billions of dollars (and a bajillion hours of work) to upgrade their infrastructure. For context, it took well over a decade for HDTV to reach critical mass. This is also true for consumers. I don't own a single 4k or HDR display. I probably won't own an HDR display until my TV dies, and I probably won't own a 4k display until I replace my work…

This is also true for consumers. I don't own a single 4k or HDR display. I probably won't own an HDR display until my TV dies, and I probably won't own a 4k display until I replace my work screen, at which point I'll also replace one of my home screens so I can remote into it without scaling. People in the HN echo chamber over-estimate hardware adoption rates. For example, there are millions of people who went straig…

> A few years ago on HN, there was someone who couldn't wrap their brain around the notion that even though VCRs were invented in the early 1960's that in 1980, not everyone owned one, or if they did, they only had one for the whole family.

Point of clarification: While the technology behind the VCR was invented in the '50s and matured in the '60s, consumer-grade video tape systems weren't really a thing until Betamax and VHS arrived in 1975 and 1976 respectively.

Early VCRs were also incredibly expensive, with prices ranging from $3,500 to almost $10,000 after adjusting for inflation. Just buying into the VHS ecosystem at the entry level was a similar investment to buying an Apple Vision Pro today.

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#126

Post by altairprime »

sandofsky wrote: post #21
gyomu wrote: post #5

As a photographer, I get the appeal of (this new incarnation of) HDR content, but the practical reality is that the photos I see posted in my feeds go from making my display looking normal to having photos searing my retinas, while other content that was uniform white a second prior now looks dull gray. It's late night here so I was reading this article in dark mode, at a low display brightness - and when I got to th…

While it isn't touched on in the post, I think the issue with feeds is that platforms like Instagram have no interest in moderating HDR. For context: YouTube automatically edits the volume of videos that have an average loudness beyond a certain threshold. I think the solution for HDR is similar penalization based on log luminance or some other reasonable metric. I don't see this happening on Instagram any time soon,…

Instagram has to allow HDR for the same reason that Firefox spent the past twenty years displaying web colors like HN orange at maximum display gamut rather than at sRGB calibrated: because a brighter red than anyone else’s draws people in, and makes the competition seem lifeless by comparison, especially in a mixed-profiles environment. Eventually that is regarded as ‘garishly bright’, so to speak, and people push back against it. I assume Firefox is already fixing this to support the latest CSS color spec (which defines #rrggbb as sRGB and requires it to be presented as such unless stated otherwise in CSS), but I doubt Instagram is willing to literally dim their feed; instead, I would expect them to begin AI-HDR’ing SDR uploads in order that all videos are captivatingly, garishly, bright.

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#127

Post by dismalaf »

therealmarv wrote: post #49

... something Linux Desktops don't understand and Macs only do well with their own displays with videos. Guess who the winner is on the desktop: Windows oO

Linux does HDR. It's *technically" worked for years but none of the big DEs had it working. Now Ubuntu 25.04 and Fedora 42 (Gnome) have it working out of the box.

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#128

Post by anon7000 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #88
aidenn0 wrote: post #62

> A big problem is that it costs the TV, Film, and Photography industries billions of dollars (and a bajillion hours of work) to upgrade their infrastructure. For context, it took well over a decade for HDTV to reach critical mass. This is also true for consumers. I don't own a single 4k or HDR display. I probably won't own an HDR display until my TV dies, and I probably won't own a 4k display until I replace my work…

> I don't own a single 4k or HDR display Don't feel like you have to. I bought a giant fancy TV with it, and even though it's impressive, it's kinda like ultra-hifi-audio. I don't miss it when I watch the same show on one of my older TVs. If you ever do get it, I suggest doing for a TV that you watch with your full attention, and watching TV / movies in the dark. It's not very useful on a TV that you might turn on wh…

I totally love HDR on my OLED TV, and definitely miss it on others.

Like a lot of things, it’s weird how some people are more sensitive to visual changes. For example:

- At this point, I need 120hz displays. I can easily notice when my wife’s phone is in power saver mode at 60hz.

- 4k vs 1080p. This is certainly more subtle, but I definitely miss detail in lower res content.

- High bitrate. This is way more important than 4k vs 1080p or even HDR. But it’s so easy to tell when YouTube lowers the quality setting on me, or when a TV show is streaming at a crappy bitrate.

- HDR is tricky, because it relies completely on the content creator to do a good job producing HDR video. When done well, the image basically sparkles, water looks actually wet, parts of the image basically glow… it looks so good.

I 100% miss this HDR watching equivalent content on other displays. The problem is that a lot of content isn’t produced to take advantage of this very well. The HDR 4k Blu-ray of several Harry Potter movies, for example, has extremely muted colors and dark scenes… so how is the image going to pop? I’m glad we’re seeing more movies rely on bright colors and rich, contrasty color grading. There are so many old film restorations that look excellent in HDR because the original color grade had rich, detailed, contrasty colors.

On top of that, budget HDR implementations, ESPECIALLY in PC monitors, just don’t get very bright. Which means their HDR is basically useless. It’s impossible to replicate the “shiny, wet look” of really good HDR water if the screen can’t get bright enough to make it look shiny. Plus, it needs to be selective about what gets bright, and cheap TVs don’t have a lot of backlighting zones to make that happen very well.

So whereas I can plug in a 4k 120hz monitor and immediately see the benefit in everything I do for normal PC stuff, you can’t get that with HDR unless you have good source material and a decent display.

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#129

Post by altairprime »

agos wrote: post #103
kllrnohj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me, HDR feels like the system is ignoring my screen brightness settings. On both Android & iOS/MacOS it's not that HDR is ignoring your screen brightness, but rather the brightness slider is controlling the SDR range and then yes HDR can exceed that, that's the singular purpose of HDR to be honest. All the other purported benefits of HDR are at best just about HDR video profiles and at worst just nonsense bullsh…

you are right but at least in my experience it's very easy for a modern iPhone to capture a bad HDR photo, usually because there is some small strong highlight (often a form of specular reflection from a metallic object) that causes everything to be HDR while the photo content wouldn't need it

In beta testing this morning, the Halide “HDR slider” works as intended to solve that. Some of my photos have only needed +0.3 while a couple taken in near-total no-light-pollution darkness have it cranked all the way to max and that still isn’t enough.

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#130

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

kllrnohj wrote: post #12
the__alchemist wrote: post #4

So, HN, are HDR monitors worth it? I remember ~10 years ago delaying my monitor purchase for the HDR one that was right around the corner, but never (in my purchasing scope) became available. Time for another look? The utility of HDR (as described in the article) is without question. It's amazing looking at an outdoors (or indoors with windows) scene with your Mk-1 eyeballs, then taking a photo and looking at it on a…

HDR gaming: Yes. HDR full screen content: Yes. HDR general desktop usage: No. In fact you'll probably actively dislike it to the point of just turning it off entirely. The ecosystem just isn't ready for this yet, although with things like the "constrained-high" concepts ( https://www.w3.org/TR/css-color-hdr-1/#the-dynamic-range-lim... ) this might, and hopefully does, change & improve to a more pleasing result Also t…

> HDR gaming: Yes.

The difference is absolutely stunning in some games.

In MS Flight Simulator 2024, going from SDR to HDR goes from looking like the computer game it is to looking life-like. Deeper shadows with brighter highlights makes the scene pop in ways that SDR just can't do.

EDIT: You'll almost certainly need an OLED monitor to really appreciate it, though. Local dimming isn't good enough.

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