What is HDR, anyway?

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.

All mediums have a range, and they've never all matched. Sometimes we've tried to calibrate things to match, but anyone watching SDR content for the past many years probably didn't do so on a color-calibrated and brightness calibrated screen - that wouldn't allow you to have a brightness slider.

HDR on monitors is about communicating content brightness and monitor capabilities, but then you have the question of whether to clip the highlights or just map the range when the content is mastered for 4000 nits but your monitor manages 1000-1500 and only in a small window.

Owning a display that can do 1300+ nits sustained across a 100% window has been the biggest display upgrade I think I have ever had. It's given me a tolerance for LCD, a technology I've hated since the death of CRTs and turned me away from OLED.

There was a time I would have said i'd never own a non OLED display again. But a capable HDR display changed that logic in a big way.

Too bad the motion resolution on it, especially compared to OLED is meh. Again, at one point, motion was the most important aspect to me (its why I still own CRTs) but this level of HDR...transformative for lack of a better word.

> What is your use case? Retro video games? PC games? Movies?

All of the above! The majority of my interest largely stems from the fact that for whatever reason, I am INCREDIBLY sensitive to sample and hold motion blur. Whilst I tolerate it for modern gaming because I largely have no choice, CRT's mean I do not for my retro gaming, which I very much enjoy. (I was very poor growing up, so most of it for me is not even nostalgia, most of these games are new to me.)

Outside of that, we have a "retro" corner in our home with a 32" trinitron. I collect laserdisc/VHS and we have "retro video" nights where for whatever reason, we watch the worst possible quality copies of movies we could get in significantly higher definition. Much the same as videogames, I was not exposed to a lot of media growing up, my wife has also not seen many things because she was in Russia back then, so there is a ton for us to catch up on very slowly and it just makes for a fun little date night every now and again.

Sadly though, as I get ready to take on a mortgage, it's likely most of my CRT's will be sold, or at least the broadcast monitors. I do not look forward to it haha.

A 32” Trinny. Nice. I have the 32” JVC D-series which I consider my crown jewel. It’s for retro gaming and I have a laserdisc player but a very limited selection of movies. Analog baby.

> Sadly though, as I get ready to take on a mortgage, it's likely most of my CRT's will be sold

Mortgage = space. You won’t believe the nooks and crannies you can fit CRTs into. Attic. Shed. Crawl space. Space under basement stairs. Heck, even the neighbors house. I have no less than 14 CRTs ferreted away in the house. Wife thinks I have only 5. Get creative. Don’t worry about the elements, these puppies were built to survive nuclear blasts. Do I have a sickness? Probably. But analog!!!