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What is HDR, anyway?

(www.lux.camera)
789 points _kush | 4 comments | 14 May 25 12:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.231s | source
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the__alchemist ◴[14 May 25 13:43 UTC] No.43984458[source]▶
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 phone or PC screen. The pic fails to capture what your eyes see for lighting range.

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kllrnohj ◴[14 May 25 13:53 UTC] No.43984568[source]▶
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 this is assuming an HDR monitor that's also a good match for your ambient environment. The big thing nobody really talks about wiith HDR is that it's really dominated by how dark you're able to get your surrounding environment such that you can push your display "brightness" (read: SDR whitepoint) lower and lower. OLED HDR monitors, for example, look fantastic in SDR and fantastic in HDR in a dark room, but if you have typical office lighting and so you want an SDR whitepoint of around 200-300 nits? Yeah, they basically don't do HDR at all anymore at that point.

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1. wirybeige ◴[14 May 25 15:49 UTC] No.43985957[source]▶
I use HDR for general usage, Windows ruins non-HDR content when HDR is enabled due to their choice of sRGB tf. Luckily every Linux DE has chosen to use the gamma 2.2 tf, and looks fine for general usage.

I use a mini-led monitor, and its quite decent, except for starfields, & makes it very usable even in bright conditions, and HDR video still is better in bright conditions than the equivalent SDR video.

https://github.com/dylanraga/win11hdr-srgb-to-gamma2.2-icm

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2. hbn ◴[14 May 25 20:59 UTC] No.43989154[source]▶
Windows HDR implementation is janky as hell. For months after I got my monitor I couldn't take screenshots because they'd all appear completely blown out, like you cranked the brightness to 300%.

Eventually I did some digging and found there's a setting in Snipping Tool that just... makes screenshots work on HDR displays.

It also seems to add another layer of Your Desktop Trying To Sort Its Shit Out when launching a game that's full screen. Sometimes it's fine, but some games like Balatro will appear fine at first, but then when you quit back to the desktop everything is washed out. Sleeping my PC and waking it back up seems to resolve this.

I recently played through Armored Core VI, and it supports HDR, but whenever I adjust my volume the screen becomes washed out to display the volume slider. Screenshots and recordings also appear washed out in the resulting file.

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3. wirybeige ◴[14 May 25 23:10 UTC] No.43990143[source]▶
I always thought the "Your Desktop Trying To Sort Its Shit Out" part was a necessary evil, but other platforms don't suffer from this (at least from what I can tell); the state of HDR on Windows is very disappointing, even just adjusting the TF to gamma 2.2 would make it substantially better. Watching all your non hdr content's blacks become gray is terrible. I assume the washed out appearance comes from it giving up on doing SDR->HDR for the desktop.

My brother got an OLED monitor & was telling me how bad his experience was on Windows, & he recently switched to Linux & does not have the issues he was complaining about before. Ofc, downsides to hdr on Linux (no hdr on chromium, hdr on Firefox is unfinished) atm, but the foundation seems better set for it.

4. qingcharles ◴[14 May 25 23:34 UTC] No.43990299[source]▶
Agree. Wide gamut and HDR is janky as hell on Windows. I have multi-mon with one SDR and one HDR and that plays havoc with things. But even Microsoft apps aren't updated. I'm pretty certain even Explorer still doesn't support HDR or wide gamut for thumbnails so everything looks either under or oversaturated in the previews. If you open stuff in the default Photos app there is a "flash of content" where it displays it in the wrong profile before it maps it to the correct one, too.