HDR and backlight level(brightness level)

[BloodshotX]

Hey,
There is a lot of confusion when it comes to HDR if i look online. I know that HDR basically extends the color range from 16 million to 1.07 billion colors in HDR.

But im kinda confused when it comes to the backlight level. Im NOT talking about the contrast, but purely about the backlight level(aka the brightness of the panel)

Is it really nessisary to have the backlight at max for HDR? I tried it and even with bias lights its not really confortable whenthe screen is going to a really white screen when for example kratos exits a cave or a game where the loading screens are all white.

Just a sidenote SDR and HDR are basically just as bright when the backlight level is the same so 25 backlight for SDR is about the same as 25 backlight with HDR(maybe even a tad brighter with hdr at 25)

Edit: ive got a QLED tv from samsung, the q70r

 

[klastical]

This is me sort of talking out of my ass here but I think it has to do with maximum brightness and the ability to discern differences in brightness. Basically when you have your tvs backlight set at let's say 50% that means that your hdr will also peak at that 50% brightness so the peak difference you can have in that range is a 0-50. If you set your backlight to 100% the biggest difference you can have is 0-100 so obviously there is 50% more room to work with when it comes to different lighting levels which will lead to more "dramatic" hdr.

 

[tokkun]

In SDR, the content maker specifies the desired brightness in relative terms, e.g. "make this 80% of the max brightness."
In HDR, the content maker specifies the desired brightness in absolute terms, e.g. "make this 500 nits."

As a result, when viewing SDR content you need to adjust your TVs maximum brightness if you want to achieve the correct absolute brightness level. With HDR you do not need to do that. That's why you are advised to keep your brightness at default in HDR if you want your set to display the image as the creator intended.

Unfortunately, since many creators are still inexperienced with HDR, they may make poor choices like displaying a full white loading screen or subtitles at uncomfortably high brightness levels.

 

[BloodshotX]

In SDR, the content maker specifies the desired brightness in relative terms, e.g. "make this 80% of the max brightness."
In HDR, the content maker specifies the desired brightness in absolute terms, e.g. "make this 500 nits."

As a result, when viewing SDR content you need to adjust your TVs maximum brightness if you want to achieve the correct absolute brightness level. With HDR you do not need to do that. That's why you are advised to keep your brightness at default in HDR if you want your set to display the image as the creator intended.

Unfortunately, since many creators are still inexperienced with HDR, they may make poor choices like displaying a full white loading screen or subtitles at uncomfortably high brightness levels.

Click to shrink...

ah okay, but the overall brightness of the game is still the same. Its not like im playing God of war on ps4, the beach and sky's are dull in HDR and allot more brighter in SDR.

the brightness of the entire scene is basically the same, so lets say your at one of the islands in god of war the brightness of the sky and the beach are basically the same in HDR and SDR if both are at the same brightness level. The HDR one is just way more accurate with color and has allot more detail in lets say fire and the clouds(that detail doesnt really go away if i lower the brightness tbf).

And as i understand God of war (4) basically has one of the best implementations of HDR out there right?

 

[Ninjician-]

HDR uses absolute values, not relative. For example. SDR is mastered at 100 nits, whereas HDR can be mastered at 1,000, 4,000 and even 10,000 nits.

Most plasmas hit about 115-250 nits. Your phone is OLED and can probably hit 600 nits. LG OLED falls at about 725 nits, and Samsung QLED can hit 1,500 nits.

It is designed to be viewed in a dim to dark environment. When you have a dim signal in HDR it will not be boosted by the TV to appear brighter than its supposed to unless it does not track the PQ EOTF properly. This means that if you feed a proper TV 100 nits, you get 100. 250, you get 250.

If you use Tone Mapping to try and squeeze 4,000 nit information onto a 1,500 nit set you will either get lower brightness, or less detail. You can't have both.

The Samsung QLED does NOT track properly and overly brightens the mid range in HDR, which can be fatiguing.

 

[BloodshotX]

HDR uses absolute values, not relative. For example. SDR is mastered at 100 nits, whereas HDR can be mastered at 1,000, 4,000 and even 10,000 nits.

Most plasmas hit about 115-250 nits. Your phone is OLED and can probably hit 600 nits. LG OLED falls at about 725 nits, and Samsung QLED can hit 1,500 nits.

It is designed to be viewed in a dim to dark environment. When you have a dim signal in HDR it will not be boosted by the TV to appear brighter than its supposed to unless it does not track the PQ EOTF properly. This means that if you feed a proper TV 100 nits, you get 100. 250, you get 250.

If you use Tone Mapping to try and squeeze 4,000 nit information onto a 1,500 nit set you will either get lower brightness, or less detail. You can't have both.

The Samsung QLED does NOT track properly and overly brightens the mid range in HDR, which can be fatiguing.

Click to shrink...

So what do you advice me to do? use the white screen from my ps4 pro HDR calibation menu in the menu and just change the value of the tv's backlight until what is max tolerable for to my eyes?

 

[ItIsOkBro]

I dunno if the problem with God of War is a problem with their implementation, the TV, or a limitation of HDR itself but I know what you're talking about. The game uses an all white screen for transitions (like entering the teleport gates) that is blindingly bright, but the brightness in general is otherwise expected.

 

[EvilBoris]

The reason you set it to the maximum is that one of the components of HDR is that the screen , or part of the screen can become very bright to better represent what we see in our everyday life.

With a Full array set, you set the backlight for maximum and then the backlight zones simply dim down the image to display darker colours.
They should just lock out that setting, there is very little reason you would want to reduce the backlight for HDR content on a set that can display it properly.

God of War's HDR implementation is not the best , there are various materials that don't function correctly in HDR and it's setup doesn't make anything clear.

One thing you can do to help Is to set the TV's Gamma/ST2084 setting to -2 or -3, this will give you a 4000nit tone map which closer matches the game.

 

[Ninjician-]

So what do you advice me to do? use the white screen from my ps4 pro HDR calibation menu in the menu and just change the value of the tv's backlight until what is max tolerable for to my eyes?

Click to shrink...

No, because you will still mess up the tracking of ALL brightness.

The PS4 Pro HDR calibration does not affect games at a system level unless they support it. I think No Man's Sky has support, but I can't think of any others.

 

[BloodshotX]

I dunno if the problem with God of War is a problem with their implementation, the TV, or a limitation of HDR itself but I know what you're talking about. The game uses an all white screen for transitions (like entering the teleport gates) and its blindingly bright, but the brightness in general is otherwise expected.

Click to shrink...

The implementation is good if the internet is to be believed.

The reason you set it to the maximum is that one of the components of HDR is that the screen , or part of the screen can become very bright to better represent what we see in our everyday life.

With a Full array set, you set the backlight for maximum and then the backlight zones simply dim down the image to display darker colours.
They should just lock out that setting, there is very little reason you would want to reduce the backlight for HDR content on a set that can display it properly.

Click to shrink...

Am i doing something wrong or something?, bc my tv in HDR is crazy bright to a point where its sometimes not comfortable. I play mostly in a dark environment, and i sometimes play for 3 hours + in a row

No, because you will still mess up the tracking of ALL brightness.

The PS4 Pro HDR calibration does not affect games at a system level unless they support it. I think No Man's Sky has support, but I can't think of any others.

Click to shrink...

Yea i know that the tool is basically idle for now, but HDR at max backlight seems way to bright for me. I thought maybe its a good idea to have an all white image in HDR and then adjust the backlight level and match it to a point where its basically the max tolerable to me.

 

[EvilBoris]

The implementation is good if the internet is to be believed.


Am i doing something wrong or something?, bc my tv in HDR is crazy bright to a point where its sometimes not comfortable. I play mostly in a dark environment, and i sometimes play for 3 hours + in a row


Yea i know that the tool is basically idle for now, but HDR at max backlight seems way to bright for me. I thought maybe its a good idea to have an all white image in HDR and then adjust the backlight level and match it to a point where its basically the max tolerable to me.

Click to shrink...

1. the game is brighter than it should be- poor implementation.
it crushes blacks and overbrightens whites.
Reduce both brightness and contrast in the game settings a little to help with this.

2. By default a Samsung set will overbrighten the image.

In game mode use one of the -st2084 settings
On other Samsung sets you need to reduce contrast down to around about 43 to correct the overbrightening, I don't know if the Q70r is exactly the same, but there is a good chance it behaves in a similar fashion.

God of War specifically is problematic when it comes to whites, the game actually clips a lot of white detail in HDR, which cannot be recovered.

have a look at a one of mystic gateways and activated it , the blue rune that appears momentarily flashes white and you'll see bits of it always remain white.

Switch HdR off and see how the white is much reduced and the colour is retained. This is kind of the opposite of what we wish expect.

 

[SirMossyBloke]

2. By default a Samsung set will overbrighten the image.

In game mode use one of the -st2084 settings
On other Samsung sets you need to reduce contrast down to around about 43 to correct the overbrightening, I don't know if the Q70r is exactly the same, but there is a good chance it behaves in a similar fashion.

Click to shrink...

Well this is new news to me after owning my set for two years. Gonna have to look into this, my contrast is set to 95 in HDR :/

 

[EvilBoris]

Well this is new news to me after owning my set for two years. Gonna have to look into this, my contrast is set to 95 in HDR :/

Click to shrink...

that's on the newer sets that have a 0-50 scale. The 2018/2019 sets.
I think on the sets with 0-100, I think 95 gives a decent default result for the tonemapper

 

[ItIsOkBro]

The implementation is good if the internet is to be believed.

Click to shrink...

However good the implementation is, I'm expecting things will go awry because they used these pure white loading screens. It's like the problem with subtitles being too bright in HDR, because subtitles are pure white. Except instead of subtitles, GoW makes the whole screen white during some loading screens. Since the brightness was otherwise acceptable for me while playing I kind of just settled on wincing every these all white transitions happened.

 

[Deleted member 36086]

So what do you advice me to do? use the white screen from my ps4 pro HDR calibation menu in the menu and just change the value of the tv's backlight until what is max tolerable for to my eyes?

Click to shrink...

I don't understand this? Every 4K TV that I've owned, when the TV receives a HDR signal it automatically sets the backlight to max. Like why would you even want to not have it at max? How can the TV achieve it's peak brightness if the backlight isn't set to max?

 

[BloodshotX]

I don't understand this? Every 4K TV that I've owned, when the TV receives a HDR signal it automatically sets the backlight to max. Like why would you even want to not have it at max? How can the TV achieve it's peak brightness if the backlight isn't set to max?

Click to shrink...

bc max is way to bright for my dark room (even with bias lamps). HDR is more than just black and white points. you go from 16 million colors to 1 billion.

But thanks for the tips guys : )

 

[BloodshotX]

1. the game is brighter than it should be- poor implementation.
it crushes blacks and overbrightens whites.
Reduce both brightness and contrast in the game settings a little to help with this.

2. By default a Samsung set will overbrighten the image.

In game mode use one of the -st2084 settings
On other Samsung sets you need to reduce contrast down to around about 43 to correct the overbrightening, I don't know if the Q70r is exactly the same, but there is a good chance it behaves in a similar fashion.

God of War specifically is problematic when it comes to whites, the game actually clips a lot of white detail in HDR, which cannot be recovered.

have a look at a one of mystic gateways and activated it , the blue rune that appears momentarily flashes white and you'll see bits of it always remain white.

Switch HdR off and see how the white is much reduced and the colour is retained. This is kind of the opposite of what we wish expect.

Click to shrink...

ah thanks for the tip!, but even if people adjust the brightness they will still have the benefits of going from 16 million to more than 1 billion colors right? Its not like all is lost right?

 

[Deleted member 36086]

bc max is way to bright for my dark room (even with bias lamps). HDR is more than just black and white points. you go from 16 million colors to 1 billion.

But thanks for the tips guys : )

Click to shrink...

But the additional color volume from HDR is tied to brightness...

 

[EvilBoris]

ah thanks for the tip!, but even if people adjust the brightness they will still have the benefits of going from 16 million to more than 1 billion colors right? Its not like all is lost right?

Click to shrink...

Thats a complicated answer, but the short answer is that most games don't make use of those extra colours anyway (yet)

 

[flipswitch]

Which PS4 games have the best HDR implementations?

What about Days Gone? I thought it looked very good, as well as God of War. GT:Sport?

 

[BloodshotX]

Thats a complicated answer, but the short answer is that most games don't make use of those extra colours anyway (yet)

Click to shrink...

Really cant wait for next gen tbh. Im hoping/guessing that developers will go all out with HDR(so not only brightness but also all the extra colors) and 4k. Ps4 pro and Xb1x really feels like dipping the toes into the HDR waters.

 

[EvilBoris]

Which PS4 games have the best HDR implementations?

What about Days Gone? I thought it looked very good, as well as God of War. GT:Sport?

Click to shrink...

Days Gone
Detroit
Gran Turismo (the only game I'm aware of they
Spider-Man (although it's pretty subdued)
Shadow of the Collossus

 

[Furnace Inferno]

bc max is way to bright for my dark room (even with bias lamps). HDR is more than just black and white points. you go from 16 million colors to 1 billion.

But thanks for the tips guys : )

Click to shrink...

With talk like that you probably should have gone with an OLED! Honestly the only thing LCD is good for is bright rooms because of its increased brightness.

I have 3 different kinds of display the OLED is the best all around, perfect blacks, very bright HDR and perfect contrast. Then a laser projector which has great black levels but HDR brightness is no where near as bright. Finally a QLED LCD which is the brightest of all and really makes bright HDR stuff shine but is so bad with mixed content because it's native contest ratio is orders of magnitudes worse than the others so it washes out the image with bright/dark content on screen together, I actually can't use it with my room lights low as it bothers me so much.

 

[BloodshotX]

With talk like that you probably should have gone with an OLED! Honestly the only thing LCD is good for is bright rooms because of its increased brightness.

I have 3 different kinds of display the OLED is the best all around, perfect blacks, very bright HDR and perfect contrast. Then a laser projector which has great black levels but HDR brightness is no where near as bright. Finally a QLED LCD which is the brightest of all and really makes bright HDR stuff shine but is so bad with mixed content because it's native contest ratio is orders of magnitudes worse than the others so it washes out the image with bright/dark content on screen together, I actually can't use it with my room lights low as it bothers me so much.

Click to shrink...

yea you could say that, but im really OCD when it comes to things xD. I mean internet is full of horror stories of OLED. Besides that i got my 55 inch Q70r for less than 900 euros, so it was basically 600 euros cheaper than a 55 inch OLED from LG.

 

[SirMossyBloke]

that's on the newer sets that have a 0-50 scale. The 2018/2019 sets.
I think on the sets with 0-100, I think 95 gives a decent default result for the tonemapper

Click to shrink...

Ahh perfect, cheers.

 

[Lukemia SL]

Days Gone
Detroit
Gran Turismo (the only game I'm aware of they
Spider-Man (although it's pretty subdued)
Shadow of the Collossus

Click to shrink...

You don't like Horizon, Ratchet and Clank or Death Stranding? 😞

 

[Teiresias]

Unfortunately, since many creators are still inexperienced with HDR, they may make poor choices like displaying a full white loading screen or subtitles at uncomfortably high brightness levels.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, blinding subtitles are all over the damn place, and not only on games but on shows and movies too.

 

[EvilBoris]

You don't like Horizon, Ratchet and Clank or Death Stranding? 😞

Click to shrink...

I can't list every game ever made! Horizon and Ratchet are both good early Examples and look great with HDR enabled, but both have room to for improvement.
Death Stranding is a whole other can of worms, I don't particularly rate it for HDR, the game has very clearly been made with SDR in mind, HDR is very much an afterthought and actually causes a few annoyances

 

[shaneo632]

So many movies I watch in HDR look so fuckin dark that I have to watch them with all my lights off. I honestly can't tell if my set is calibrated wrong or not half the time.

 

[BloodshotX]

EvilBoris do you think more developers will fully use HDR next gen. Not only for the bright and dark points but also in terms of color? With God of war and ac origins i can really see some differences. Kratos his axe in the loading screen actually looks brown in hdr and the sunset in origins tend to look orange'ish when the sun hits buildings in SDR and it looks allot more natural in terms of color grading in hdr.

 

[EvilBoris]

So many movies I watch in HDR look so fuckin dark that I have to watch them with all my lights off. I honestly can't tell if my set is calibrated wrong or not half the time.

Click to shrink...

Thats how HDR movies are designed to be watched unfortunately.
Some content producers and colourists recognise this as a problem, but others say it's not their problem , it's their creative intent, it's your Problem to fix.

You would be doing the same with SDR movies too if the TV enforced luminance in the same way.

 

[Lukemia SL]

I can't list every game ever made! Horizon and Ratchet are both good early Examples and look great with HDR enabled, but both have room to for improvement.
Death Stranding is a whole other can of worms, I don't particularly rate it for HDR, the game has very clearly been made with SDR in mind, HDR is very much an afterthought and actually causes a few annoyances

Click to shrink...

I'd love to see you do a video on this sort of thing. Where you want to see improvements, what's doing good and bad right now and how things can get better in the future, stuff like that.
Death Stranding is at least better than whatever red dead attempted so I'm settled with it.

 

[EvilBoris]

EvilBoris do you think more developers will fully use HDR next gen. Not only for the bright and dark points but also in terms of color? With God of war and ac origins i can really see some differences. Kratos his axe in the loading screen actually looks brown in hdr and the sunset in origins tend to look orange'ish when the sun hits buildings in SDR and it looks allot more natural in terms of color grading in hdr.

Click to shrink...

This will be down couple of things.
A: Your set isn't calibrated, so colours will likely be different between picture modes.

B: God of War's internal conversion isn't very good and the colours and contrast are all wonky in HDR anyway

God of War is not a good one to use as any kind of example, because of its various issues.

A number of games are able to use some of the new colour technology as part of their rendering pipeline, but for the most part the actual textures and effects are not made with WCG in mind, so the improvement is limited.

Many of the new colours don't actually exist in the real world, so from an art perspective, the places where they will be most "obvious" are going to be in games that are more Fantasy or Sci Fi

Gran Turismo Sport , is a game that features a lot of wide colour content and assets in the game . I reccomend taking a look at the scapes mode where the background art has been photographed in a larger colour space than normal photos.

 

[Ruranghi]

EvilBoris Its kind of awkward when people see badly implemented WCG/"HDR colour" in games like God of War & Hitman 2 [Maybe just a driver issue as you pointed out in HDR Games Analyzed thread, but overall gives a similar looking "problem" to the colours as GoW] and think thats what WCG is supposed to bring to games, ie heavily oversaturated and inaccurate colours. When done correctly it makes the image closer to reality and actually LESS saturated generally, unless its a fantastical/stylised game as you pointed out and then they can go nuts although it does help with representing neon lights/colours in games of any art style, like the gas station lights in RE2 Remake. GT Sport being the reality-based outlier here because they actually made the assets with HDR/WCG in mind.

The fact that lots of people prefer the oversaturated look due to horribly destructive Vivid/Dynamic picture modes + various "image/contrast enhancer" settings being an option on modern TVs has clearly contributed to this misunderstanding of HDR+WCG. All these people buying OLEDs as the "perfect" TV for gaming/movies when no shop attendant/review is going to point out that accurately showing a dark cave with little or no sources of light accurately in HDR will produce a very dark scene that practically must be watched in the dark to even see whats going on. Games producers are seeing/experiencing this annoyance a lot of people feel when seeing properly rendered dark HDR scenes and boosting the black level to make it playable in a bright room and then everyone wonders why they bought an OLED in the first place because they need to crush the shadows/blacks to get those true black pixels.

For a movie example that encapsulates this perfectly I encourage everyone to check out Annihilation on Netflix on their HDR TV's internal app - near the end of the film, in the lighthouse, when she goes down into the cave, before the big set piece happens tell me how that looks on your TV. If your TV is properly calibrated it will be literally unwatchable in the daytime, I have a Sony ZD9 and I need the curtains shut and the lights off to see basically any shadow detail, but thats how it would look if you were in a cave with hardly any light sources and the HDR reflects that. I tried it on my OLED and I could barely see the image during the daytime with the curtains open even in Dynamic picture mode.

 

[Vinegar Joe]

EvilBoris Its kind of awkward when people see badly implemented WCG/"HDR colour" in games like God of War & Hitman 2 [Maybe just a driver issue as you pointed out in HDR Games Analyzed thread, but overall gives a similar looking "problem" to the colours as GoW] and think thats what WCG is supposed to bring to games, ie heavily oversaturated and inaccurate colours. When done correctly it makes the image closer to reality and actually LESS saturated generally, unless its a fantastical/stylised game as you pointed out and then they can go nuts although it does help with representing neon lights/colours in games of any art style, like the gas station lights in RE2 Remake. GT Sport being the reality-based outlier here because they actually made the assets with HDR/WCG in mind.

The fact that lots of people prefer the oversaturated look due to horribly destructive Vivid/Dynamic picture modes + various "image/contrast enhancer" settings being an option on modern TVs has clearly contributed to this misunderstanding of HDR+WCG. All these people buying OLEDs as the "perfect" TV for gaming/movies when no shop attendant/review is going to point out that accurately showing a dark cave with little or no sources of light accurately in HDR will produce a very dark scene that practically must be watched in the dark to even see whats going on. Games producers are seeing/experiencing this annoyance a lot of people feel when seeing properly rendered dark HDR scenes and boosting the black level to make it playable in a bright room and then everyone wonders why they bought an OLED in the first place because they need to crush the shadows/blacks to get those true black pixels.

For a movie example that encapsulates this perfectly I encourage everyone to check out Annihilation on Netflix on their HDR TV's internal app - near the end of the film, in the lighthouse, when she goes down into the cave, before the big set piece happens tell me how that looks on your TV. If your TV is properly calibrated it will be literally unwatchable in the daytime, I have a Sony ZD9 and I need the curtains shut and the lights off to see basically any shadow detail, but thats how it would look if you were in a cave with hardly any light sources and the HDR reflects that. I tried it on my OLED and I could barely see the image during the daytime with the curtains open even in Dynamic picture mode.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, there seems to be a lot of misinformation surrounding HDR and WCG, to the point where people aren't satisfied unless they're being blinded by sunlight and multicoloured rainbows.

I physically sigh every time I enter a cave in a videogame and see elevated blacks with no shadow detail.

 

[BloodshotX]

This will be down couple of things.
A: Your set isn't calibrated, so colours will likely be different between picture modes.

B: God of War's internal conversion isn't very good and the colours and contrast are all wonky in HDR anyway

God of War is not a good one to use as any kind of example, because of its various issues.

A number of games are able to use some of the new colour technology as part of their rendering pipeline, but for the most part the actual textures and effects are not made with WCG in mind, so the improvement is limited.

Many of the new colours don't actually exist in the real world, so from an art perspective, the places where they will be most "obvious" are going to be in games that are more Fantasy or Sci Fi

Gran Turismo Sport , is a game that features a lot of wide colour content and assets in the game . I reccomend taking a look at the scapes mode where the background art has been photographed in a larger colour space than normal photos.

Click to shrink...

Is HDR really that bad with god of war? It seems fine to me(besides the white loading screens tbf). I havent calibrated my screen bc it was fine to me, and its not really that important to ne. What is the most heard complaint with the hdr implementation of god of war?

Also gt sports is not really my cup of tea. But i will definetely look up some hdr yourtube video of the game

 

[MakgSnake]

Which PS4 games have the best HDR implementations?

What about Days Gone? I thought it looked very good, as well as God of War. GT:Sport?

Click to shrink...

One of the best HDR games in my opinion...

Hitman 1 and 2
Rise and Shadow of Tomb Raider
Battlefield V
Gears of War 4 / 5
Uncharted 4

And the BEST one - Horizon: Zero Dawn - (UNREAL)

I have OLED - That supports Dolby Vision - But doesn't matter, all games do HDR10 - 10 BIT - 1 Billion Colors.

Hopefully next gen might support Dolby Vision for games.. meaning - 12 BIT which equals to 63 Billion Colors. Fingers crossed.

Right now only Apple 4K TV supports Dolby Vision.

Xbox One X also supports Dolby Vision on Netflix.. which is good for original content

 

[Ferrs]

One of the best HDR games in my opinion...

Hitman 1 and 2
Rise and Shadow of Tomb Raider
Battlefield V
Gears of War 4 / 5
Uncharted 4

And the BEST one - Horizon: Zero Dawn - (UNREAL)

I have OLED - That supports Dolby Vision - But doesn't matter, all games do HDR10 - 10 BIT - 1 Billion Colors.

Hopefully next gen might support Dolby Vision for games.. meaning - 12 BIT which equals to 63 Billion Colors. Fingers crossed.

Right now only Apple 4K TV supports Dolby Vision.

Xbox One X also supports Dolby Vision on Netflix.. which is good for original content

Click to shrink...

No TVs can display 12bit colors yet. Not like we need it that much, the main advantage of DV is the dynamic metadata.

 

[flipswitch]

all games do HDR10 - 10 BIT - 1 Billion Colors.

Click to shrink...

I thought current games that use HDR are in 24bit 16.7 million colours?

 

[Jessie.Bristol]

You want the backlight maxed out also because of Color Volume. The brightness in HDR does affect the richness of the brighter colors. Reducing the backlight will diminish that.

 

[bigstef71]

How high do you want the contrast to be in HDR?

 

[Sanctuary]

There is a lot of confusion when it comes to HDR if i look online. I know that HDR basically extends the color range from 16 million to 1.07 billion colors in HDR.

But im kinda confused when it comes to the backlight level. Im NOT talking about the contrast, but purely about the backlight level(aka the brightness of the panel)

Is it really nessisary to have the backlight at max for HDR? I tried it and even with bias lights its not really confortable whenthe screen is going to a really white screen when for example kratos exits a cave or a game where the loading screens are all white.

Click to shrink...

This might be pedantic, but HDR doesn't actually extend the color range. Wide Color Gamut does, and HDR works in tandem with it. HDR is for the brightest highlights as well as allowing more details in shadows and near black for a more realistic image overall.

As for your actual question, it might vary by manufacturer, but typically the "backlight" or whatever it's called on any given set should be maxed for HDR. If your TV is Dolby Vision compatible, it might need to be maxed, or left at half, depending on the model. If certain scenes are bothering you to the point in which they are either intolerable, or actually causing pain (or causing your eyes to burn after a period of time), then lower the backlight. It's not worth going for accuracy if it's that uncomfortable.

 

[flipswitch]

This might be pedantic, but HDR doesn't actually extend the color range. Wide Color Gamut does, and HDR works in tandem with it. HDR is for the brightest highlights as well as allowing more details in shadows and near black for a more realistic image overall.

As for your actual question, it might vary by manufacturer, but typically the "backlight" or whatever it's called on any given set should be maxed for HDR. If your TV is Dolby Vision compatible, it might need to be maxed, or left at half, depending on the model. If certain scenes are bothering you to the point in which they are either intolerable, or actually causing pain (or causing your eyes to burn after a period of time), then lower the backlight. It's not worth going for accuracy if it's that uncomfortable.



There aren't any 24-bit consumer TVs. There are not any 12-bit consumer TVs for that matter that I know of yet either. The standard HDR is HDR10, which means 10-bit.

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24bit colour, which is 8bit per channel.

RGB images are made of three color channels. An 8‑bit per pixel RGB image has 256 possible values for each channel which means it has over 16 million possible color values. RGB images with 8‑bits per channel (bpc) are sometimes called 24‑bit images (8 bits x 3 channels = 24 bits of data for each pixel).

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[Sanctuary]

24bit colour, which is 8bit per channel.

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Oh yeah, nevermind. That's right. Not sure how the consoles are handling that.

edit:

The Xbox One console should be set to output at an 8-bit color depth. This probably seems counterintuitive to those with 4K HDR TVs, whose panels support a 10-bit or higher color depth. However, it has been demonstrated that the Xbox One will still automatically output all HDR content in 10-bit or 12-bit color depth, even when the console's video output settings are set to 8-bit. The advantage of setting the Xbox One's color depth to 8-bit is quite simple. The console renders all non-HDR (SDR) content in 8-bit, and setting your console to output in 10-bit or 12-bit will negatively affect the image quality of SDR content due to the introduction of inherently flawed video reprocessing.

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[Deleted member 49319]

I found Horizon in HDR annoyingly oversaturated.
GT Sport still the king.

 

[bsigg]

Xbox One X also supports Dolby Vision on Netflix.. which is good for original content

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The Xbox One S also has HDR support, including Dolby Vision.

Disney+ on the X and S both supports Dolby Vision.

 

[RedlineRonin]

Hopefully next gen might support Dolby Vision for games.. meaning - 12 BIT which equals to 63 Billion Colors. Fingers crossed.

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Doubt adoption would ever be high enough for it to make sense.

Also they'd have some work to do. In Mass Effect Andromeda, even in DV game mode, the latency was horrendous. And I am not at all the "oh I can tell there's 5 more ms" kind of guy. It was just ultra noticeable to borderline unplayable. Would be unuseable in any multiplayer setting.

 

[bsigg]

Doubt adoption would ever be high enough for it to make sense.

Also they'd have some work to do. In Mass Effect Andromeda, even in DV game mode, the latency was horrendous. And I am not at all the "oh I can tell there's 5 more ms" kind of guy. It was just ultra noticeable to borderline unplayable. Would be unuseable in any multiplayer setting.

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With frame meta data part of the HDMI 2.1 spec, developers could get essentially the same benefit on new TVs without having to go through Dolby and such.

 

[OldDirtyGamer]

Wait, so I should set my TV backlight to 100%?

 

[Pizzamigo]

I've owned a few local dimming sets, and each time the backlight in HDR was set to 100 by default (and reviewers recommended to keep it at full backlight for HDR) . Made sense. However, with my 2019 Vizio P Quantum X, the backlight is set to 50 when in HDR and RTINGS recommends keeping it at 50 for HDR/Dolby Vision.

Wondering why this TV is an exception.