With the race to 4K leaving us dizzy and rather poorer than we’d intended, monitor and TV manufacturers need to dig deeper into the ever-shrinking list of reasons why we should upgrade our displays. You see, once you’ve got a fantastic 4K telly, what the heck are they going to sell you next? 8K’s coming eventually of course, but there’s a dearth of content and we’re truly, deeply into the quandary of diminishing returns. So they’ve turned to HDR, or High Dynamic Range. HDR is all about better pixels, rather than more pixels. The actual process is fairly easy to get your head around. HDR offers a greater dynamic range of colours than SDR (Standard Dynamic Range), meaning whiter whites, more vivid colours, great colour bit depth, and a resulting image which should more closely resemble the colour range the human eye sees at.
Cutting through all the technical doodads, HDR can allow a display to output at a much higher brightness than a standard monitor. Too bright, in fact, but an HDR display will seldom display at the maximum possible brightness. This brightness can be manipulated to deliver more vivid colours, more detailed shadows and highlights, and smoother colour gradations and tonal shifts.
formerly Mad Cornish Projectionist.