Will HDR on PC be a disaster?

[Deders]

Suite yourself.

Well 10 and 12 bit monitors are already available and have been for years. HDR monitors are not available. It's a different standard.

 

[mnewsham]

Suite yourself.

LOL, 10-bit color depth is NOT HDR.

Part of HDR is bringing 10-bit color depth to the average consumer, BUT that is not ALL HDR is. HDR is actually a much larger contrast ratio range. A normal TV at this point displays between 7 and 9 stops, it has between 7-9 contrast levels it can display. HDR panels will potentially offer up to 20 stops, though for most consumer level monitors they will be 12-15 stops, which is still almost double the contrast we currently have. In order to show that many different stops the panels MUST have a pretty decent contrast ratio of around 3000:1 or 4000:1 or greater, currently IPS and similar technology cannot achieve this easily, but with OLED we can.

Also, HDR photos are NOT the same thing as HDR video.

 

[Headfoot]

Only VA and OLED can hit the contrast ratios needed today. Maybe there is one single IPS monitor (Vizio P 50" 2016) due to a pretty robust backlight array with localized dimming

 

[biostud]

For nvidia cards you will need a special nvidia module for it to work. AMD just need a driver update....

Nvidia certainly knows how to make money

 

[biostud]

Wouldn't a VA panel with dp1.3/1.4 be able to reach the bare minimum of HDR specs?

Obviously OLED would be better, but unless you have $5K that is not going to happen soon.

 

[mnewsham]

Wouldn't a VA panel with dp1.3/1.4 be able to reach the bare minimum of HDR specs?

Obviously OLED would be better, but unless you have $5K that is not going to happen soon.

Yup, VA panels are the only hope for the next 2-3 years for cheap HDR displays.

Otherwise we'll be waiting on OLED to come down in price.

 

[Bacon1]

Wouldn't a VA panel with dp1.3/1.4 be able to reach the bare minimum of HDR specs?

Obviously OLED would be better, but unless you have $5K that is not going to happen soon.

Yeah I was excited for HDR monitors, but then I realized they will likely be crazy expensive (just like 1440, 4k, IPS, etc all were back when they were new) for a few years. So I went with a cheap XR341CK which has been amazing. I'll wait for the HDR to drop under $700 before buying

 

[freeskier93]

Only VA and OLED can hit the contrast ratios needed today. Maybe there is one single IPS monitor (Vizio P 50" 2016) due to a pretty robust backlight array with localized dimming

I have a Vizio M55 and for the price/performance ratio I don't know why anyone would spend over twice as much on OLED. The only "issue" with the M series is it's not true 10-bit, the panel is 10-bit but the ICs are 8-bit + dither. As noted wider color gamut is only half the story, contrast is the other half. I recently watched Pacific Rim through Vudu in 4K Dolby Vision and it was glorious.

IMO Vizio's VA panels with FALD get VERY close to the performance of OLED.

 

[Headfoot]

The only reason I didn't get a Vizio P series today was because I've heard there are 4:4:4 issues when using it in PC mode. I would assume Vizio will fix them in time but I didn't want to run the chance they dont, so I got a Samsung KS8000. So I lost the array backlight, but the native contrast ratio on the VA panel they use is super high even for VA so it ended up being a great purchase.

But totally agreed. I demo'd OLED and the KS8000 in the same size bracket. The OLED was $1000 more. $1500 vs $2500, and sure the OLED is ridiculously impressive, but OLED TV's today don't have scalars that support the high refresh rates the panels are capable of. OLED can do 120hz+ easy but you dont get that mode for PC use. So its a moot point to me.

So that leaves you with just the fantastic off angle viewing and outstanding contrast ratio. Given how good the KS8000 and other modern VA panels are it just wasnt worth $1000 to me. Also - OLED doesn't get very bright. They both meet the UHD Premium HDR spec but OLED does it via perfect contrast, LCD VA does it via having nearly double the brightness available.

The LCDs actually do look better in high light situations due to the brightness on tap

 

[topmounter]

The key components of UHD are:

4K resolution (3840x2160)
Higher dynamic range (brighter brights / striking contrast, 1,000(+?) nits)
Greater color depth (10-bit currently)

Dolby Vision is a competitive proprietary end to end solution (certification from mastering to display) capable of up to 12-bit color, up to 10k nits of brightness with more/better metadata.

 

[Headfoot]

One really cool concept I haven't seen in the consumer space is double-stacked LCDs. Think of one of the LCDs as a 1:1 dimming array with 0 light halos. I don't know why it's never taken off in the consumer space, but for many years it was the de-facto manner of getting extremely high contrast rations for medical imaging equipment and the like.

nVidia did some cool stuff with it a few years back: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...ing-two-cheap-lcd-panels-on-top-of-each-other

 

[imported_bman]

I think the disaster will be how Windows will handle the various colour spaces used by different apps, given MS track record I expect all sorts of bugs.

 

[Piroko]

One really cool concept I haven't seen in the consumer space is double-stacked LCDs. Think of one of the LCDs as a 1:1 dimming array with 0 light halos. I don't know why it's never taken off in the consumer space...

I can think of two reasons, one is cost (two LCDs, two drivers, need for alignment procedures at assembly) and the other, more important one is that it murders the maximum brightness. I don't think we've seen mass-produced panels yet that get over 30% transparency, multiply that (0.3 * 0.3) and you get ~9% transparency for the stacked LCD...

 

[tential]

The only reason I didn't get a Vizio P series today was because I've heard there are 4:4:4 issues when using it in PC mode. I would assume Vizio will fix them in time but I didn't want to run the chance they dont, so I got a Samsung KS8000. So I lost the array backlight, but the native contrast ratio on the VA panel they use is super high even for VA so it ended up being a great purchase.

But totally agreed. I demo'd OLED and the KS8000 in the same size bracket. The OLED was $1000 more. $1500 vs $2500, and sure the OLED is ridiculously impressive, but OLED TV's today don't have scalars that support the high refresh rates the panels are capable of. OLED can do 120hz+ easy but you dont get that mode for PC use. So its a moot point to me.

So that leaves you with just the fantastic off angle viewing and outstanding contrast ratio. Given how good the KS8000 and other modern VA panels are it just wasnt worth $1000 to me. Also - OLED doesn't get very bright. They both meet the UHD Premium HDR spec but OLED does it via perfect contrast, LCD VA does it via having nearly double the brightness available.

The LCDs actually do look better in high light situations due to the brightness on tap

Considering they didn't fix the last model of the Vizio p series with the same exact issue I doubt they'll fix it now.

It's still a good buy imo

I think given the price difference of oled vs lcd for TV, I would pay the oled premium if it allowed refresh rates above 60. That's what I'm waiting on. The next 2 years will continue to push 4k and oled and hdr hard and I don't want to be heavily invested into any new display while it all unfolds.

The qnix for $400 monitor is the only thing on my radar but amd has no card to drive it so I guess I'll wait til 2017? See 1 year of waiting already done.....

 

[freeskier93]

I think the disaster will be how Windows will handle the various colour spaces used by different apps, given MS track record I expect all sorts of bugs.

As I already mention the Xbox One S is a perfect example of this. Although I don't think it's entirely an issue with Microsoft but an issue with the HDR10 spec.

 

[imported_bman]

As I already mention the Xbox One S is a perfect example of this. Although I don't think it's entirely an issue with Microsoft but an issue with the HDR10 spec.

I was thinking about the situation where two or more apps are open at the same time with at least one app in HDR and one in SDR. It is easy to map a SDR colour space to HDR, but where it gets complicated is managing all the various draw methods used by different APIs. I just think how poor scaling is on Windows for high dpi.

 

[Gunbuster]

The TV space is a mess. HDMI 2.X was a cluster, the scalar engineers are still oblivious to the fact anyone would want to drive a TV via PC, let alone at 4K 4:4:4 60Hz low input lag, or have the option to step it to 1080P 4:4:4 120Hz. Heck to even get basic 4:4:4 you have to dink around in the TV OSD to enable HDMI in most cases. They wonder why adoption is low yet make you have a PHD in system settings to even get something enabled, then you're at the point where hopefully they engineered the feature correctly and bug free.

HDR should "just work" from the PC desktop on up.

 

[nathanddrews]

As I understand it, in order for PC gaming to enter the HDR realm we need the following:

1. Operating system support (maybe... AMD demoed HDR and it's likely that if the driver and application support it, then the OS is irrelevant... however OS support won't hurt anything)
2. GPU driver support (NVIDIA and AMD both claim it is coming)
3. GPU hardware support (AMD showed off actual hardware running on HDR TVs)
4. Display support (There are many TVs on the market currently, but only professional monitors)
5. Game support (Some game demos have been shown off on Xbone, but I suspect Microsoft is going to withhold HDR until Xbone 2 in order to make it more "premium")

HDR does not require 10-bit or 4K. It can work with 8-bit or 12-bit, 720p or 1080p. HDR10 - the specific standard - is just metadata transmitted as part of the UHD spec. Using something like the HDFury, that metadata can injected, stripped, or modified on the fly.

The tools for HDR are here now and the ability to display it are here and available now, I suspect the only reason we aren't seeing it is because publishers and developers are looking for the best way to monetize it as a premium above and beyond normal gaming.

 

[freeskier93]

5. Game support (Some game demos have been shown off on Xbone, but I suspect Microsoft is going to withhold HDR until Xbone 2 in order to make it more "premium")

The recently released Xbox One S supports 4K and HDR. Gears of War and Forza Horizon 3, releasing later this year, will support HDR.

 

[nathanddrews]

The recently released Xbox One S supports 4K and HDR. Gears of War and Forza Horizon 3, releasing later this year, will support HDR.

Yes, I know that it does, but currently the only HDR content available on the Xbone S is UHD Blu-ray and Netflix. The games aren't available yet - I hope they keep their word and deliver.

 

[nathanddrews]

Awesome, Sony just announced that in addition to the PS4 Slim for $299 and PS4 Pro for $399 (4K and HDR), all PS4 models all the way back to launch consoles will support HDR after next week's firmware update. Good Guy Sony. It's a shame Microsoft couldn't do that with older Xbones. But hey, it's a start. Microsoft, AMD, and NVIDIA would have to be retarded to try to paywall HDR gaming at this point. No UHD Blu-ray for PS4 though, womp womp.

UPDATE: HDR update for previous models might be for streaming video only... waiting for confirmation. :/

 

[cmdrdredd]

It's not that your post wasn't read but I mean it's way too early to tell what the standards are for hdr.

I don't think it will get that far for most buyers. Most people don't even care about 4k, oled, hdr, etc. So I don't think any of the stuff you listed is going to be the thing that stops hdr on PC.

I'm not even sure how what you posted is relevant to PC. It's all TV related stuff it has nothing to do with how hdr will be implemented on PC.

Of course it does because HDR content is coming to the PC and people use their PC for gaming which will get HDR and some for htpc which will have HDR supported apps.

 

[cmdrdredd]

It sure looked like it last time I saw one, nothing more than a gimmick to make people buy new monitors

Then you didn't see true HDR.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Mistake post.

 

[Raduque]

While interesting for TVs, I am unlikely to care about HDR for gaming, and neither am I going to connect a PC to a TV again now that Media Center is dead.

I want an affordable ($2000-2300) 80"+ OLED 4k tv, though. Replace my current 75" 1080p 120hz.