HDR10 - Eye candy or annoying distraction?

[Regeneration]

I can't decide if to play with HDR enabled or disabled on my LG 4K TV and PS4.

Horizon Zero Dawn
HDR on


HDR off


God of War
HDR on


HDR off

 

[phanbuey]

Interesting... not a massive difference either way. HDR IQ looks good but maybe too much saturation - which is why the HDR off looks more balanced. Maybe turn saturation down on the tv if using HDR and it will look a bit better?

Might get rid of that "God of War: Magic Mushroom Edition" feel.

 

[Lionheart]

TBH it looks good with & without it.

On my 4K LG TV HDR looks like garbage, the colours are all washed out & has a hazy look to it, I've tried different settings but I just came to the conclusion that I bought a budget 4K TV & I'm content with that.

 

[Regeneration]

On my 4K LG TV HDR looks like garbage, the colours are all washed out & has a hazy look to it, I've tried different settings but I just came to the conclusion that I bought a budget 4K TV & I'm content with that.

The stock HDR profiles are really bad.

Sharpness must be boosted, and on some models too dark in game mode, requires forced PC mode to fix.

HDR on seems to add more input lag and possibly lower FPS.

 

[AsRock]

The stock HDR profiles are really bad.

Sharpness must be boosted, and on some models too dark in game mode, requires forced PC mode to fix.

HDR on seems to add more input lag and possibly lower FPS.

Don't know about the game(s), how ever what you say about the sharpness, it's way over the top to the point it looks crap.


How ever i think the rocks on the left in GoW(HDR) look much better maybe darker or even better shading ?.

 

[Palladium]

Meh, by the time HDR matters it would be a standard baseline feature like 1080p. Certainly not even worth bothering now on LCDs without local dimming.

 

[Solaris17]

I think its personal, I like HDR myself.

 

[mbeeston]

I think its personal, I like HDR myself.

HDR depends on the game alot, i do think it adds to games like doom eternal though.

 

[basco]

in your screen from horizon it seems to make black\darker areas totally black and without hdr i can see its not black but brown with some shadows like the jacket he is wearing.
the same with the back of kratos - brown with shadows goes to nearly all black.
but i think that could be some TV thingy?

question: do ya have image sharpening=on?

 

[Regeneration]

in your screen from horizon it seems to make black\darker areas totally black and without hdr i can see its not black but brown with some shadows like the jacket he is wearing.
the same with the back of kratos - brown with shadows goes to nearly all black.
but i think that could be some TV thingy?

Static lighting vs. dynamic lighting... shadows change according to your location and the sun.

 

[basco]

so ya mean if she would stand a few centi\meters further in the sunlight it could look totally diff.

and is this hdr10\+ or ?

 

[Calmmo]

To my understanding its almost equally about hardware and per software implementation.
So a game that does it well on a good OLED it's supposed to look good.

I've not seen an OLED + a video game in action so I dunno. (have seen a movie, once, and it was decent)
I have seen LED screens without full array local dimming ranging from HDR400 to HDR600 in action and it's quite frankly horrible and only serves to cause blindness.

 

[Chomiq]

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't hdr mode on TV use its own settings? That's why you see more sharpening and difference in saturation. Adjust everything to your liking.
Sharpness 10 is neutral for LG.

 

[Vayra86]

Its just an overpriced Reshade filter to me.

Honestly most of what I've seen in HDR just feels like I walked into a store to look at TVs. Its overly bright, its oversaturated and it really just seems to LOSE definition and instead tries to cram all of the rainbow's colors into your head.

Color is a weird thing, our eyes adjust to it, and more saturation is NOT the purpose of HDR at all. The actual purpose is to create more definition with much finer color adjustments. No more color banding in a skybox gradient for example. You don't need high brightness for it, you need high static contrast and the right color space + information. 99% of all HDR panels and 100% of monitors now do it instead with higher brightness, and since the panels are shit, the black point goes right up along with it.

Im not touching HDR or expanded color spaces for entertainment until OLED Is the norm or some similar emissive tech with 0.00 black point. Hard pass on looking straight into the headlight.

 

[Vya Domus]

I don't want to ruin everyone's fun comparing these but ... both of those images are SDR, you can't show HDR images like this. The reason the HDR version looks different and darker is because of the conversion from 10 bit to 8 bit color channels, since some values don't exist they just get clipped to the highest values so detail is lost.

So this is pretty much pointless.

 

[londiste]

Assuming pictures are taken with the same settings seems like a crap HDR mapping on either TV or software side to me.
HDR should not change the brightness of most things compared to SDR image.

 

[Regeneration]

Here are 2 more photos... taken from a smartphone.

HDR OFF


HDR ON

 

[Vya Domus]

Assuming pictures are taken with the same settings seems like a crap HDR mapping on either TV or software side to me.
HDR should not change the brightness of most things compared to SDR image.

It's not brightness, it's an illusion, let's say the value for a pixel on the red channel on an HDR image is 512, that is out of range for an 8 bit display so it either get's clipped to the highest value 255 or is scaled appropriately to something like 128 depending on how the conversion is implemented. So color may appear more vivid or washed out, information is lost.

HDR images on SDR displays or images that have been converted look "contrasty" or darker.

 

[Vayra86]

I don't want to ruin everyone's fun comparing these but ... both of those images are SDR, you can't show HDR images like this. The reason the HDR version looks different and darker is because of the conversion from 10 bit to 8 bit color channels, since some values don't exist they just get clipped to the highest values so detail is lost.

So this is pretty much pointless.

A tonemap is a tonemap and its a fact that HDR pushes a wider range of that. The wider range shows in the intermediate color space but ALSO on its edges, and that is where brightening definitely does occur. After all, if you don't create additional contrast in the image, you can't possibly make out new gradations of color. An example in the above screenshots: some of that color information is simply lost to us lowly-non HDR peasants and the result is black and white crush. Which translates to oversaturated, overexposed. On an HDR panel with high brightness range, that works in a different way though. You mgiht be able to see some gradient in those bright spots where we couldn't now... but its still awful to look straight into, because its bright. And what do you do then? You squint a little bit... losing color info regardless. Its uncomfortable to look at, just as it is now looking at overexposed images.

This is also why the VESA HDR spec was introduced to begin with. Monitors are flawed by design being LCD with a backlight, and incapable of creating the contrast values required to have enough 'space' for a new tonemap. Solution: you get a brighter backlight, and even if the black point does move up as well, you still gain contrast 'range'.

This also answers why OLED is the only technology truly capable. It has a low black point and can make do WITHOUT crazy high brightness and still achieve noticeable contrast steps. Its just a crapload better at the darker hues, no greyish haze covering it. This is also what you see when you put OLED side by side with LCD. LCD might be just as crisp in bright images... but it quickly looks dull once there are darker shades around.

 

[Regeneration]

Appears the automatic colorspace detection is broken on the PS4.





Works better with manual settings.

 

[authorized]

On my 4K LG TV HDR looks like garbage, the colours are all washed out & has a hazy look to it, I've tried different settings but I just came to the conclusion that I bought a budget 4K TV & I'm content with that.

But washed out colors are the result you get when you try to display HDR video on an SDR screen, it sounds like either the display didn't actually support HDR or it was not enabled.

 

[mtcn77]

But washed out colors are the result you get when you try to display HDR video on an SDR screen, it sounds like either the display didn't actually support HDR or it was not enabled.

HDR10 does not express HDR scale.

 

[X71200]

Why isn't the model of the TV mentioned? It probably has a crappy implementation of HDR.

 

[Regeneration]

Why isn't the model of the TV mentioned? It probably has a crappy implementation of HDR.

LG has two 4K TV families: OLED and Super UHD.

There is also a firmware issue for all series with HDR being too dark in game mode. LG fixed it on some models, but not all.

 

[X71200]

That didn't answer anything and, no. LG has a TON of different UHD TVs. In fact, they make panels for other companies such as Sony and Philips. Going to any electronics store for once would show you this.