Fun with HDR

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

As the Last Windows update says it now supports High Dynamic Range better, and my TV also says it supports HDR I thought would give it a go.

The first obstical was that a software update to my TV has moved the HDR settings and the manual is now wrong. I can now enable HDR on a per input basis instead of globally but It took me half an hour to find that out.

That sorted on HDMI 1 its over to Windows HDR settings only to find that Windows refuses to believe that my TV is HDR capable.

My TV is setup as display 2 and although it is UHD it is only displaying 1080p because it is a clone of display 1 and that is its highest resolution.

After much messing about with swapping display 1 and 2 to no avail I decided to try “output to display 2 only”. Bingo full UHD and HDR but only on the TV of course.

Well nearly. HDR yes. HDR gaming yes. HDR video streaming NO.

There is another setting to actually enable HDR gaming and that also enables HDR video streaming.

So was it worth it ? I don’t know, I havent got any HDR content yet !

[The Duke]

Lol. Sounds like blu Ray all over again..

Video content wise, YouTube has some good 4k hdr stuff. And if your on the Netflix pagage that isn’t the basic one user sd pack that has some hdr stuff to

I have a mate with a 50” 4k hdr that refuses to pas Teh extra 2 or 3 quid a month to Netflix and watches all his content in 480p. It looks like dog crap. But he is happy. Artifacts as big as my thumb, and the colour blending hurts to see. Tight git he is.

[JayCeeDee]

The Duke wrote:

Tight git he is.

Does he come from Cardigan?? I had an ex-brother in law, sang in the London Welsh Male Voice Choir and played with the Rugby team once in a while. When he married my sister, they gave him a card with a pound note – yes, one of those – sticking out of the chap’s pocket on the front of the card. He gave it a pull and it whipped out of his hand and back into the pocket. It was attached by a piece of elastic!! Says it all.

My Dad came from a building family, even though he worked on the Post. He knocked through their cottage wall, put in an RSJ and re-plastered it for them over a couple of weekends.

Mum knew the BiL had just got an LP and asked him to record it onto a cassette for her. He did that for free, but charged her 50p for the cassette!!!

The marriage didn’t last very long……………….

[Bob Williams]

Much like a maternal cousin I had found some years ago, in my first Family history attempts. He had some information that would go in a an ordinary DL envelope as letter post. I asked him on phone if he would send it. He asked for a stamp, which would of course cost me 2 stamps!

We are no longer in contact, I found the info via another much older cousin, who told me that an uncle I hardly knew was just like that. Then I remembered some of the penny-pinching by my mam.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[keith with the teef]

Interesting.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Now i’m looking into HDR content I find that HDR comes in 3 flavours, plain HDR 10, HDR 10+ and Dolby Vision.

HDR 10 uses a 10 bit colour depth and uses a static pallet for every frame. HDR 10+ adds a dynamic metadata stream so the color pallet can slide around a bit from frame to frame. Dolby Vision is also dynamic but the colour depth goes up to 12 bit as well.

Still haven’t got any yet though ?

[Ed P]

Check out your hdmi cable- see link

If you have been cheap and reused an old cable there is a fair chance it cannot do full hdtv 12 bit or even 10 bit.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

I ment I haven’t got any HDR content to watch ?

The short clip that Windows provides plays back fine but its hard to make any judgement on that. If anything it seems to show more shades in the clouds but LESS colour overall ?

With HDR on the desktop definitely looks washed out but then that is not output in HDR. There is now a seperate slider to adjust HDR brightness but colour is still lacking.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Oh yes I know about the cables. Discounting automotive there are 4 types. Standard speed or high speed both with or without ethernet.

HDMI 1.4 cables are high speed and I haven’t yet seen anything that uses Ethernet over HDMI.

The HDMI 2.1 spec has defined higher data speeds but it did NOT define a new cable.

Anyway all my cables are 1.4 and they all work fine ?

[The Duke]

No John, he is an English lad, an old mate form back home. He is as blind as a bat, so I don’t think he’d notice the difference tbh. But he does moan (alot) that all his Netflix content has black bars. I tried explaining aspect ration to him one night when we was a tad drunk, he is very not techy, so I shouldn’t of tried when drunk, I traid to explain scaling to Fort his screen, and he was so angry thst his wide screen wasn’t wide screen and Netflix was ripping him off.

I logged into my account on his TV, and it filled his wide screen, which just made him more pissed off, as he seen it as NF just crippleing his TV unless he paid another £2per month.

The guy earns about 3k a week! But won’t send An extra 2 to fill his tv.

It’s strange how some people are, as he isn’t tight, she spoils my kids, far to much, and noting is ever an issue, but any thing tech oriented, he just won’t spend anything on it. He doesn’t like what he doesn’t understand, and had no interest in learning it. He just gets mad at it.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Some people just enjoy having something to moan and get all over heated about. It is always the same things over and over again. Don’t even try to take their pet hate away from them, they won’t thank you for it.

A mate of mine had moaned for 3 years that he couldn’t access the menu on his second hand sony TV because he didn’t have the original remote. In the end I got fed up with hearing it so I found a brand new original remote on Amazon and just brought it for him.

All was fine for about a week, then he started moaning about ” the bloody TV menu system”. You cannot win ?

[The Duke]

Lol – love it.

In his mind, you’re gonna by him a new TV next. But don’t, as next hell start about his gearbox issues.

[D-Dan]

The problem with HDR video is, it doesn’t look like the world looks. As a general rule, nothing looks that vibrant in RL. It just looks unnatural, to me.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[The Duke]

I don’t know, Id doesn’t have to be vibrant. All thd early demos are to show of the tvs. I’ve seen doom nice nature stuff. The same a BR nature is always a good way to show it off.

Either tropical fish, or bright desert shots. Ones that are naterally more vibrant.

Though in reality, and the long term, I’m more interested in the darks, making dark sceens more dark, but also being able to see details, liek in real life. I think that is where 4k HDR plus will shine.

[Bob Williams]

90+ grumpy neighbour is the bane of our Close, I have had so many problems with his stuff. He had a perfectly good TV until 5 years ago, a Toshiba HD 32″ and he was OK until he messed up the Tuning. Bugga’d up all the channel settings by trying to get what next door had: next door has Sky, he has Freeview! He begged at my doorstep, I went down and set the TV to Auto tune, after trying hard to explain that his neighbour had Sky. I showed him neighbour’s dish and his own aerial, explained difference. He asked me how much for Sky and decided it was too much even for the basics. Then he went off at a tangent, complaining that it was the government’s fault and somehow connected that to the Digital Switchover a few years ago. I had a Frustration Head by then, so left him moaning and went home. Week after, he turns up with a clock that had stopped working. Battery was dead! A few months later, he messes up the TV tuning again, I reset it and told him not to touch it again.

Next thing I know, he buys a new LG 50″ TV! Brilliant picture, but he was sitting about 3 feet away from it. He had gone back to believing that he could get Sky again. I asked for his son’s number, as he was the idiot who got the new TV. Told him that he was now responsible for his own mistake and I would not be helping his dad again: if his dad turned up on my doorstep, I would direct him to son. Told dad he will get no more help from me, but I would help if he was ill. The old git never seems to get ill!

There is only so much that you can stand: being a cheery, happy optimist I cannot stand moaners.

 

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Richard]

For a long time I did not bother much with the ‘TV races to get better’ and the same old multi standard kit we used in Japan met our needs. Then I splashed out on a plasma TV, a much larger beast but then later on, for some reason, we decided that a new larger slim line item would be nice, so we splashed out once more, actually twice more a Blu-ray / DVD player (not yet used) came along with a sound bar. I know that there will always be something else new to try to tempt cash from my pocket, I easily ignored 3D and though removing my cataracts was magic, I rarely bother to watch the high definition channels rather than the standard ones as it makes little or no real difference to the programmes. I suspect many are heavily processed from ‘other sources’ and when viewed from 20 ~ 25 feet away the difference fades to nearly nothing; its better to save storage space on the PVR.

Mind you I do find the digital retuning a pain as channels come and go yet secure no real change.

I am told HDR is the next ‘great thing’ but to me it sounds like too much marketing and too little substance to justify a change.

I understand your view about moaners Bob. I admit to being one tonight. We just caught a fast non stop train to our local station within our cheap day ticket validity period returning from my wife’s London hospital visit to replace the sample the Yanks ‘lost’. Then I turned left out of the station and spent 50 minutes travelling under a mile on the way home. I could have turned right and used the route that had us stuck for half an hour doing a similar distance on the way there making us later than planned. Just don’t talk about the car parking machines, most touch screens ignore me, these registered an input from 4 inches away, always the wrong input! The print outs fall into a bin at less than knee height, making them painful to retrive if you have joint pain. Do the idiots want people to let the train cause the strain or not?

I should feel better after dumping that lot, moans over, time for a drink I think.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

I have now played a few HDR videos on Youtube and I am not convinced.

It seems to me that setting the PC’s output to HDR knacker’s the colour for SDR content. Playing back HDR content dosn’t seem to do much more than restore the colour you lost in the first place ?

[Tippon]

Richard wrote:

I am told HDR is the next ‘great thing’ but to me it sounds like too much marketing and too little substance to justify a change.

When it’s done properly, HDR can be amazing. The problem is it rarely seems to be done properly. Have a look at the second cityscape example here:

https://skylum.com/aurorahdr

[Richard]

Yes Tippon I can easily agree with your statement though one of the images did look a little over processed. I believe that I could do some HDR work with my digital camera, but time energy and a whole lot else get in the way of learning. Some years back I scanned some prints from photographs my daughter took on a school trip. The originals were of muddy bits in a fog, the scanned images were not the same as those in your link but by heck they were a whole lot better than the originals. So, yes I can believe in processing capabilities, but can I feel the burn towards an HDR TV? Sadly not, my current investment in TV is too far from being amortised.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Well you DO get deeper blacks with HDR. The Youtube HDR channel has a space walk video with a fat widescreen format showing narrow black bars top and bottom.

Well it does honest. With the deep black of space at the top of the picture you cant tell where the video ends and the black bar begins, same when the blackness switches to the bottom.

Not sure if I like it. Looks like the picture has jumped up or down.

Some people are never happy ?

[Author]

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