back to article The future looks bright: Prepare to be dazzled by HDR telly tech

The future of television’s so bright you’ll have to wear shades. At least, that might be the case if plans to evolve television to a High Dynamic Range (HDR) future gather traction. HDR has been exciting the creative community for some time now. Philips Goya TV from 1972 Digital, HDTV, UHD, HDR... the upgrade cycle continues …

  1. Bog witch

    Piss-poor marketing?

    Oh, the irony of using low resolution text on an infographic for HDR TVs.

  2. Malcolm 1

    Advertisers dream?

    Given the problems with adverts pushing the perceived audio levels to gain attention, imagine what marketeers would do with this technology. Washing so white it sears the brand name on your retina?

    Apart from that it sounds quite tasty though.

  3. DrBobK

    Brightness is not all there is

    How many bits per colour channel?

    How many colour channels (or what coverage of the human colour gamut)?

    1. DrBobK

      Re: Brightness is not all there is

      I looked at the uhd roadmap graphic more closely and it has some answers. Phase 2 looked as if it was limited to 10 bits per channel (but 12 bit distribution?) Phase 3 looked as if it could use 10, 12 or 14-bit. Both phase 2 and phase 3 use a BT.2020 colour space, which fills much more of the human colour gamut than the current standard but still misses a chunk that could probably only be reproduced by using more than three colour channels. From a vision research perspective the 10-bit limitation in phase 2 is a pity but the Phase 3 specification looks very impressive indeed.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Is power consumption really an issue? The article says that the average is not much different from current levels. If more shadow detail is going to be visible then does the average level have to be brighter?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "The article says that the average is not much different from current levels."

      The whole point of the Eurotards "product policy" is to reduce power consumption versus current levels, because they've belatedly realised their crackpot, Greenpeace approved energy polcy means there's a danger of running out of juice.

      Having said that, the chaps over at Cree have LED's running at three times the light/power ratio of current production LEDs, so I'd guess that there is some hope that the twerps of Strasbourg won't be able to completely stop the march of technology, despite their ambitions to do so.

      But, but, but......all this lovely quality on the image side doesn't seem to be matched by either volume or quality on the content side, and there's also the problem of bandwidth I can't see OFCOM's vision of IPTV delivering HDR 4K telly in our lifetimes, and the fuckwits propose to hand over all broadcast spectrum to the mobile networks so that people can watch cat videos on small screens on their way to work.

      1. DropBear

        Hmmmm...

        I foresee a generous sprinkling of supercaps on these - after all, the name of the game is not how much peak energy do you snaffle but how much do you need on average - and surely the blasts of floodlight style peak power would be limited in any show / movie, if nothing else to protect the viewer; the caps could carry you over a few minutes of "high beam" and could quietly recharge between them...

  5. Yugguy

    I'll wait thanks

    Until:

    a) a particular standard has been adopted across the board.

    b) said standard has been adopted long enough that a new TV with it is cheap.

    1. Tim 11

      Re: I'll wait thanks

      c) there's something worth watching on ;-)

      1. Richard Ball

        Re: I'll wait thanks

        d) woodgrain on chipboard cabinet. That'll seal the deal for me.

      2. Jay 2

        Re: I'll wait thanks

        To paraphrase another El Reg commenter on what I'm sure was a very similar subject (probably 3D):

        "Dross in HDR is still dross"

        I think the TV manufacturers are getting a bit restless. They're quite keen on us all buying new TVs, but now that a lot of us have HD flatscreens with HDMI connections, we're fairly happy. So far their plan has been; 3D, "smart" TVs, 4k...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I'll wait thanks

          > So far their plan has been ... <snip> ... 4k ...

          I'm not complaining about 4K, not because I want a better telly (hardly ever watch the one I have), but because it is finally meaning decent resolution panels being produced in volume, so it may finally kick 1080p out of PC and laptop displays. PC monitors have been static in terms of resolution for 10 years thanks to TV determining the "economics" and TV moving to something better is the only way to unblock that.

          4k2k monitor - yes please. 4k2k TV - whooo ultra high definition HDR amplified compression artefacts on freeview - wonderful.

      3. ian 22
        Thumb Down

        Re: I'll wait thanks

        Not to "Nit" pick, but there is no source of 4K nor high-Nit signals.

        Why should anyone expend their hard-earned currency for Tellies with no function?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I'll wait thanks

          Half-Life from 10 years ago with HDR emulation* enabled wants to have a word with you.

          *They can't reproduce that huge variance of brightness in our regular monitors, so they cheated by placing some glare, like being inside a dark cave and looking outside in a well-lit sunny day. They faked some overexposure, just like our eyes would behave when inside such cave. Their own free demo explains it MUCH better than I could ever hope to.

          No, there are no high-Nit signals for TV, but gaming has been dealing with HDR for a long time. All their HDR coding would just be removed and the original game scene would be restored in a full HDR monitor.

          On the other hand, sci-fi scenes would be awesome on HDR, staring straight at a star over a black blackground... I wonder if movie theaters can cope with that?

    2. PNGuinn

      Re: I'll wait thanks

      Which in this game means that it is at least 5 "standards" back down the road and there are now no "cheap" screens available using it.

      Welcome to the brave new world of landfill tvs.

      ps - Call for you. Last 2 dacades want a word. Black and white tv era is on holiday and will call you later

      1. Yugguy

        Re: I'll wait thanks

        What a stupid comment.

        Until there are channels broadcasting in this wonderful new technology why would I want to change my rather nice and quite new Samsung HD TV?

        Just how clearly do I really need to see the wrinkles on a newscaster's face?

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: I'll wait thanks

          "Just how clearly do I really need to see the wrinkles on a newscaster's face?"

          Depending on the age of said newscaster those might not be "wrinkles" so much as "polyfilla"

  6. Kay Burley ate my hamster

    Just the other day...

    Just the other day I was thinking isn't it great that you can point a TV camera at the sun and not get blinded by the playback.

  7. BlartVersenwaldIII

    A difficult problem to solve

    Coming from doing HDR imaging in photography, this strikes me as a very tricky problem.

    Whilst it's great to see that people are trying to get better dynamic range out of LCDs, presenting it to the user will be very difficult. Do you use the whole range of $source and just do a simple blend (which often results in an image that looks unnaturally flat due to the lower contrast) or attempt a tone mapping (which, to my eye at least, often looks overly contrasty and frequently unnatural)? Even so those are quite difficult to do in realtime as they're quite computationally expensive, and it's difficult to judge the effects as LCDs these days don't have the dynamic range to match that of the human eye. And frankly I've no idea how you'd get older non-HDR imagery to display nicely 100% of the time on a HDR panel.

    Not to say that overly, unnaturally contrasty is bad - Ansel Adams prints are probably the best and almost certainly the most famous example of HDR work - but strikes me that it might be used very much as a gimmick that tires the eyes very quickly. Renaissance (probably the most contrasty movie ever) was frequently beautiful to look at but it hurt my eyes when viewed in a darkened room.

    Of course, all of this is moot since when the TV manufacturers ship sets they appear to do so on the proviso that the user wants to see a colossally over-saturated image anyway since apparently that's what people associate with a "good" picture in TV showrooms and then push it through a bunch of image-smoothing and grain removal followed by an unsharp masks that give a lot of media the impression that it's been dipped in vaseline before it lost a fight in a scrapyard. I would love it if one of those daft presets that's frequently used on TVs was actually something resembling accurate colour...

    1. stucs201

      Re: get older non-HDR imagery to display nicely 100% of the time on a HDR panel.

      Simple - just display it at the same brightness as it would be on a non-HDR screen. No need for any fancy attempts to stretch it to the full range, just use the subset of the HDR range that the content is encoded for.

      It might not look as natural as HDR content woyld, but its going to be no more strange than displaying B&W content on a colour tele using only the greys and ignoring all the reds, blues, etc.

    2. petur

      Re: A difficult problem to solve

      Another problem (that was mentioned way too briefly in the article) is ambient light.

      If I'm watching in a dark room, blacks will need to be black and white should not be full power 1000 nit. When there is more light (daytime,...) the blacks don't matter much but you do need the high output on white. So it's maybe better to shift around a bit within the light output.

      And I don't buy it that ambilight alone will solve this. If TV is going to output 1000 nits, ambient light sensors are going to be a must.

      1. Tom 35

        And I don't buy it that ambilight alone will solve this.

        They are going to need a spoiler, and fuzzy dice too.

      2. John H Woods Silver badge

        Re: A difficult problem to solve

        As a projector user I already find the currently fashionable habit of cutting to white rather than black; (and minimalist slogans on a bright white background) rather uncomfortable. Looks like watchers of regular TV will soon be joining me in shielding their eyes.

  8. No Quarter

    Not convinced

    Spent the first week of ownership of my present telly getting the settings to look the opposite of what this sounds like.

    How about putting the bit rate of HD content back to how it was intended instead of working hard to give us optical migraines.

    1. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

      Re: Not convinced

      Me neither; I much prefer a darker balance than 'full in-your-face brightness'. I suspect I am somewhat photophobic, as it appears 20% of the population may be, though not to the degree of inducing epilepsy or seizures.

      Still, it should certainly make "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding" dresses shine.

      1. PNGuinn

        Re: Not convinced

        No I don't think you're photophobic - learn a new term on the reg every day - I can drive all day in full sun, hate tinted glass and dark glasses, low sun does not bother me. But I think EVERYONE has their tv way too bright.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Not convinced

          Oh no I don't! I have been in the trade and seen more folks' tellies than you can throw a stick at with the colour cranked right up (lobster faces, etc). Hideous. However, we always had to leave the settings as they were when brought into the workshop for a fault (no matter how tempting to alter things give a more natural look) or else there were complaints when the set was returned to the effect that "it doesn't look quite the same as it did". I even had to tame the factory settings on my own Panasonic TV (a brand I rate highly), as the colour and brightness were way OTT out of the box. Why do they do it?

          1. J 3
            Mushroom

            Re: Not convinced

            People seem to like very saturated, high contrast pictures. I see the same phenomenon in photography. After my photographer friends pass their shots through Lightroom, for example, they come out supersaturated and very sharply contrasted, I've noticed. That's always gets plenty of oohs and aahs -- and since I was sometimes there when the shot was taken, I know that the sunset looked nothing like that to the naked eye...

            1. DiViDeD

              Re: Not convinced

              "the sunset looked nothing like that to the naked eye..."

              That seems to be a thing with photgraphers these days. I've seen a lot of work from young photographers in Sydney which, from a technical viewpoint are way oversaturated and contrastedbut which have still been quite beautiful to look at. It's always referred to as 'photography as art' in it's own right, and I think it has a place, along with HDR images and those bloody awful (IMHO) 'Look! I can make my $2,000 DSLR produce images that look like they were made by a plastic pinhole camera' fad of recent days.

      2. Tom 35

        Re: Not convinced

        I just bought a new 23: IPS monitor and when I first turned it on in the default "showroom mode" my first response was GHAA MY EYES!

        Once I had the brightness turned down, and the colour set to something more natural it's very nice.

        Give me good black level, better colour space. I don't need a TV that will require me to put on SPF 50 sun screen before turning it on.

    2. DropBear

      Re: Not convinced

      Spent the first week of ownership of my present telly getting the settings to look the opposite of what this sounds like.

      Good point. I just remembered that my CRT TV, my laptop and my new HD LCD monitor all have their brightness turned way down (it actually backfires sometimes on some of the oh-so-trendy-nowadays really dark shots in some movies - then I have to remember to switch to a different preset to see anything at all; but normally it works out just great to the point where I just forget about it completely).

  9. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

    It's interesting

    Higher definition doesn't really excite me. HD is enough for me, until the screens get unfeasibly large. But then I've got crap eyesight.

    Frame rates may be more interesting. Although I've heard that they got mixed results with using 48fps when showing the Hobbit in cinemas last year. Some people thought it looked worse. Though that may just be people not being used to it.

    HDR is more attractive though. I often sit down to watch a moodily lit film, and struggle to see any detail amongst the darkness. Even after turning the room lights off, I'm still struggling to see what's going on. Again, that's down to the eye condition. But HDR is likely to help it. However, the condition also gives me very limited tolerance for bright light - unlike a gremlin, you can feed me after midnight... So I don't fancy going from struggling to see the dark tones to having to don sunglasses whenever things get bright.

    There's a lot going on at the moment. It seems very uncertain as to what standards TV will be using in 10 years time. I think the industry need to do some sorting out, because most people won't upgrade if they're going to have to change their TV again in 3 years.

    1. DropBear

      Re: It's interesting

      Youtube recently introduced 50/60 fps frame-rate support (but as far as I can tell you can only see it in Chrome...). Having gotten used to the usual low-rates on Youtube, I'm still looking for my jaw after it dropped to the floor watching the first 60 fps clip (funnily enough, since I should be used to that from TV...)

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Running out of marketing tricks to sell new sets.

    I'm surprised they've not used "retina" or "HD sound" as gimmics yet.

  11. jzlondon

    Still happy with my non-HDMI, non-HD, circa 2001 TV.

    Why?

    There's nothing worth watching.

    1. jzlondon

      Also, it's a TV. I'm happy enough to see the story hear the words. If it's a good programme, you soon forget the image quality anyway.

      If I wanted an immersive experience, I'd go out for a walk.

      1. Chicken Marengo
        Coffee/keyboard

        @jzlondon

        >>If I wanted an immersive experience, I'd go out for a walk.

        I misread that last word.

        1. jzlondon

          No you didn't.

          1. JDX Gold badge

            "If it's a good programme, you soon forget the image quality anyway"

            Is that like saying "if it's a good song, you soon forget you're listening to a 96Kbps MP3 rip of a heavily compressed version through your phone's loudspeaker"?

            1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

              Re: "If it's a good programme, you soon forget the image quality anyway"

              Is that like saying "if it's a good song, you soon forget you're listening to a 96Kbps MP3 rip of a heavily compressed version through your phone's loudspeaker"?

              No, which raises an interesting point. Even the most cloth-eared music listeners get annoyed by pops, clicks and hiss, and are aware of it right through an album, yet when you watch a TV picture that's B&W, or has some snow on the picture, you (well, I at least) quickly tuneout the imperfections and get absorbed in the story.

              Is it because we're less sensitive to visual noise, or because there's more information in a complex video story, or is it a music/speech thing?

              Discuss...

              1. GreenLawn

                Re: "If it's a good programme, you soon forget the image quality anyway"

                I can remember late night horror films I watched 15 years ago that I watched on a black and white teli, because they were good films. I cant remember which transformers film was which, even though they were watched on big hi-def supersound TV. Coz they were crap. No point buying a new telly till the old one breaks.

              2. Shedman

                Re: "If it's a good programme, you soon forget the image quality anyway"

                That was something that came up in videophone research. It was found that breakup and noise on the picture was far less intrusive than that on the sound.

                Which makes me wonder why picture quality is getting better, (apart from the awful colour setting) and the sound quality is getting worse.

                1. DropBear

                  Re: "If it's a good programme, you soon forget the image quality anyway"

                  You don't like what's "on the telly"? FFS, this is 2014, buy/rent/find what you want to watch.

                  Yeah, well, about that... it seems to be problematic. Believe it or not, these days I prefer watching a bloke explain and demonstrate how he uses his lathe or mill on Youtube for hours and hours and hours on end to pretty much anything passing for official "entertainment" - and I like a good movie or show as much as anybody. There just aren't any around - the ShakyCam lens-flared kaboom-filled CGI crapfest can go straight to hell for all I care, right after whatever passes as the equivalent of Big Brother nowadays (and by the way get off my lawn).

    2. PNGuinn

      Agree with that - still happy with the 12 inch B & W we chucked over 30 years ago when we decided that the licence (B & W) wasn't worth renewing.

    3. CCCP

      @ jzlondon

      Then why on <deity's> earth are you reading a tech heavy site that writes about new technology?

      Maybe you're good with code. In which case you're sure as hell not using 2001 standards.

      Maybe you're against progress. Then please move to a different forum.

      You don't like what's "on the telly"? FFS, this is 2014, buy/rent/find what you want to watch.

      1. jzlondon

        I read the Register out of habit - have done almost since it started - and I'm a programmer. A pretty decent one too, if my earnings and career path are any measure.

        I'm not "against progress", whatever that even means. I have a science background and I think science and engineering are the most worthy of all human activities. But I'm pretty sure that if slightly better tellies count as progress then we've lost our ambition.

        As for the comment about renting stuff, well that's kind of the point isn't it? I watched an entire season of Game of Thrones recently and did it all on a laptop. It did the job perfectly well.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Frame rate

    No comment in the article about the proposed doubling of maximum frame rate. If content is delivered at 100/120fps that will to my mind be the most significant improvement for fast action & sports.

  13. Jimbo in Thailand
    WTF?

    What The F...?!

    I love HDR photography, but this seems like a totally different kettle of fish so I wish they would give it a different name. HDR photography combines multiple exposures taken with different exposure settings to eliminate overly bright washed out areas and to remove/lessen extremely dark shadows. The idea is to provide more visible detail throughout the image so it actually tends to reduce the extreme light/dark range. One aspect of HDR photography, if not used sparingly, results in very unrealistic, quite surreal images. Hopefully this new video technology will not result in similarly surrealistic results.

    We'll just have to see how this develops but I'm not looking forward to getting blinded by bright sunlight coming from my TV even it it appears more realistic. It seems like they should instead be concentrating on displaying more colors accurately if they want to improve the viewing experience, but that's just my opinion at this early stage.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: What The F...?!

      Actually it's the HDR label for photography that is the partial misnomer. To create those images, yes, more dynamic range must be captured, but it is then mapped (squashed) to fit the limited range of the output display - for ''artistic effect'.

      With a capable display unit, no squashing would be necessary.

    2. BristolBachelor Gold badge

      Re: What The F...?!

      No - HDR photography is taking photos with a high dynamic range. There is no need to take multiple exposures if your image sensor has the requisite range (12 stops is not enough). There have been a few image sensors that had alternate photosites with a different gain (sometimes done electrically, sometimes by using smaller/larger photosites). Using these sensors, the de-mosaic works out the correct photosite to use because one will typically be saturated, and the other somewhere in the noise floor.

      The idea of HDR video is to still take a series of single exposures, but each one has a wider range than currently.

      1. TheWeddingPhotographer

        Re: What The F...?!

        Well here is the thing

        What is the dynamic range in stops of the thing you are viewing it on?

        Look up: eye, screen, paper, camera.

        The only useful reason for a sensor to have a higher dynamic range is to allow the photographer to manipulate how the information is compressed back down again in post processing

        1. stucs201

          Re: only useful reason for a sensor to have a higher dynamic range

          Until we also get screens with higher dynamic range (which is what the article was about). Yes you'll still have to map it back down if for printing, but that's not what we're discussing here.

        2. Dave 126 Silver badge

          Re: What The F...?!

          >The only useful reason for a sensor to have a higher dynamic range is to allow the photographer to manipulate how the information is compressed back down again in post processing

          Not all 'output' is ink on paper, or a website. Example: using a camera with HDR (or exposure bracketing > post processing) to create an 'environment map' for illuminating virtual objects. It is important that enough dynamic range is captured so that a white object in a scene is distinguishable from a light-emitting object in a scene.

          One can also image that HDR-capture would be essential for capturing the nuances of a stained-glass window or similar - each panel might vary in opacity, as well as hue, saturation and black-level (as well as reflectivity, transmission etc).

          1. TheWeddingPhotographer

            Re: What The F...?!

            Thumbs up for a great scientific approach. you get where I am coming from, my bad for focusing on photography

      2. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: What The F...?!

        >The idea of HDR video is to still take a series of single exposures, but each one has a wider range than currently.

        There is also the technique of using a half-silvered mirror and two carefully aligned video cameras - one very sensitive (for dark areas), the other with a neutral density filter or whatever (for very bright areas).

        Very handy if you ever have to use a remote-controlled welder - software can allow all of the workpeice to be viewed, not just the area close to the welding arc!

    3. nijam Silver badge

      Re: What The F...?!

      That's because HDR photography isn't actually HDR, it's 2 (or 10, or whatever) ordinary DR photographs munged together, then printed to look HDR, or maybe just H-ish DR.

  14. OffBeatMammal

    interesting SIGGRAPH paper this year (and a pretty video to go along with it) - http://www.disneyresearch.com/publication/temporally-coherent-local-tone-mapping-of-hdr-video/. What makes it interesting is that it doesn't seem to rely too heavily on pushing the brightness of the display but tweaking the content behind the scenes... of course that doesn't sell new TVs so watch it be dismissed!

  15. Natalie Gritpants

    "You can’t long stare out at daylight without feeling dazzled"

    You need to get out more. Really out, not in the car.

  16. Pete 2 Silver badge

    The fad now leaving from platform 4 ...

    > any improvement in brightness and contrast is easier to appreciate

    Groan,

    Except that most people watch their TV in a well lit room. So whatever black level the TV is capable of, under laboratory conditions, is completely negated by the reflections (direct or indirect) from the high-gloss screens. Even matt screens reflect some light - or you wouldn't be able to see them when the OLED or backlight was off. So trying to convince people that brightness / contrast is some wizzy new wonder-technology is flawed right from the start.

    It's made even more pointless by the crap content of the programmes on offer, too. Apart from most of them being repeats made anytime between yesterday and 1970, does it really matter if a news broadcast, football match, comedy or documentary can split the difference between 1-bit of brightness - or not? The content is still the same, the score won't change and the laughs will (or won't) be just as good. Most people watch TV for the content, not the delivery. So maybe the route to more TV uptake is to start making better programmes?

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: The fad now leaving from platform 4 ...

      The idea is that some parts of the image are very bright - this would improve viewing in rooms with bright light sources. Indeed, the whole idea is that the TV would better represent the range of light levels we see around us in the real world.

      1. Pete 2 Silver badge

        Re: The fad now leaving from platform 4 ...

        > the whole idea is that the TV would better represent the range of light levels we see around us in the real world.

        The problem is that the human eye has quite a restricted range of acceptable intensity levels. Look at something bright and you're dazzled and can have after-images for several seconds. Look at something dim just afterwards and you can't see it in detail until your iris expands out to let in enough light. So HDR images that contain both very bright and dimly lit portions won't be seen very well as our eyes will adapt quickly.

        Once your TV picture has a dynamic range that exceeds that of our eyes, without them dilating all the excess DR is wasted. Current TVs are already able to display an image that is too bright to allow our eyes to see both the bright portions and the dim ones simultaneously.

        1. Dave 126 Silver badge

          Re: The fad now leaving from platform 4 ...

          >The problem is that the human eye has quite a restricted range of acceptable intensity levels. Look at something bright and you're dazzled and can have after-images for several seconds. Look at something dim just afterwards and you can't see it in detail until your iris expands out to let in enough light.

          That can only serve to make the displayed image more realistic-looking. Of course, it would be irritating if it was abused, though.

          >Current TVs are already able to display an image that is too bright to allow our eyes to see both the bright portions and the dim ones simultaneously.

          Hmmmm.... I'm not yet convinced of that. Try:

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range

          http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/dynamic-range.htm

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The fad now leaving from platform 4 ...

          > Once your TV picture has a dynamic range that exceeds that of our eyes, without them dilating all the excess DR is wasted.

          Not all the dynamic range in HDR needs to be "brighter" - you generally get more quantized levels available in the between the existing "LDR" min and max luma levels. In dark scenes where you eye is already dilated this allows the HDR scene to show subtle detail which is not visible in an LDR encoding.

          Yes, ambient light doesn't help this (eye dilation isn't only determined by the scene), but TBH many people do watch films (the most likely HDR candidates people will actually care about) with the lights off ...

    2. CCCP

      Re: The fad now leaving from platform 4 ...

      @Pete 2

      OK, Iet's assume you work with code (sorry, second time today I have a dev go). That's like saying "let's get users to write some proper prose in my /whatever/ application, otherwise it doesn't matter what my code behaves like". Yes it does. It raises the standard. Borderline analogy, but you get my point.

      Sure, it is a way to sell more tellies, but that's how the market economy works. As a side benefit we get better DR and a bit more wow from our downtime. Not so bad, eh?

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh god help is when people cant get 601 > or < 709 colour space conversions right half the time now there is 2020 to contend with... agggg

  18. TheWeddingPhotographer

    To be utterly honest

    Your average large LED TV, currently on the market, is good enough for any family application. Unless you are specifically using the screen for something requiring a higher dynamic range or frame-rate, there is little point in upgrading.

    If you want truly awesome 3d sound and vision, go for a walk in the forest as the dawn emerges.

    The static dynamic range of your eye is about 100:1. Because we have a pupil that can open and closes we can effectively extend this range. The indication here is that in a fixed lit environment (cinema, living-room etc.). You really don't need a massive rapidly changing levels of light on the screen - as the user , like in the real world does not have time to adapt to it (you do reach for the sun-visor on a bright day yea?)

    Unless you give viewers time to adjust to the environment and the imagary, and also the enviroment is right (dark room, black walls) the viewer wil not be able to percieve the extended range properly

    Aditionally

    Looking at a simple measure (apical angular resolution ) // resolving power of fovea (eye), on a 60inch TV, a healthy eye will be just be able to perceive difference between 2 pixels

    720p: 20.9 feet

    1080p - 7.8 feet

    4k - 3.8 feet

  19. jzlondon

    Another rant

    The real thing that upsets me about this is the waste. Not so long ago, a TV was something you kept for 15-20 years. Now, people are changing them every few years. The waste is astonishing - these things are big and they're full of complex parts with energy-intensive manufacturing processes. Not to mention the rare earths and the conflict minerals.

    And it's not like they even really provide a boost to our economy. They're all made in China by far Eastern firms and sold to us by people whose jobs pay close to minimum wage.

    Gah.

    1. jzlondon

      Re: Another rant

      And they're not even exciting. I want my hoverboard. Not interested in a slightly better telly.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Another rant

      Do you really think people are throwing away their old TVs? Of course not, if they're still working they'll sell them on Craigslist or something. There are still a lot of old CRT SD TVs out there that people won't replace until they die, or until some tosser sells a three year old 50" HDTV for $60 because they just bought a 65" 4K TV :)

      1. jzlondon

        Re: Another rant

        Currently there are around 10 million TV sets sold in the UK each year and rising. There are 25 million households in the UK.

        That means that each household is buying a new TV every 2.5 years. And the numbers are going up.

        http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/market-data/communications-market-reports/cmr11/uk/1.22

  20. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Unhappy

    No Thanks

    I've no use for HD, I can't see the dots on standard TV, so no gain. If HDR cartches on, you can be certain of abuse by production wonks.

    Finally, I don't see the benefit of spending money on something I won't use - these days I seldom watch videos - no time for broadcast TV at all.

  21. Gene Cash Silver badge

    Then it's compressed to shit for broadcast

    If I watch sports like motor racing, I can't distinguish the logos on the vehicles because of the artifacting, and 10% of the time, the picture just breaks up into blocks. Watching the Orion launch with the ocean behind the pad was annoying because the waves were artifacted into a grey slush.

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Then it's compressed to shit for broadcast

      Maybe you should watch the proper version, not a dodgy online stream? BBC/Sky F1 for instance is gorgeous after they upgraded the filming to HD.

      Though some channels are far worse and I guess maybe you're watching motor racing on ITV4 or something where it LOOKS like a dodgy pirate feed even though it isn't?

  22. Mage Silver badge

    I'll wait

    Till actual program content improves. There seems to be less I want to actually watch each year.

    1. Cynic_999

      Re: I'll wait

      I suspect that in that case you are looking in the wrong places. There is a huge amount of SD and HD video content both on disk and available for download that covers just about all tastes. I can easily find 52 new feature films per year that I enjoy, and enough short programs and documentaries to supply me with at least one per day.

  23. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

    The fundamental problem for Greens...

    ...“If the EU is going to pursue its energy consumption strategy, I think not. Even 800 Nit is going beyond its limits,” he says candidly....

    ...is that humanity keeps improving things, and they want to stop this. In every generation these nutters think that we have gone just too far beyond the ideal, and ought to be pulled back a bit to our grandfather's time.

    Imagine trying to design cars to a limit of 20 hp (the 1905 Rolls), or aircraft to 110hp (Sopwith Camel). The only reason that they're trying to force down power usage is that windmills can't actually produce very much...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The fundamental problem for Greens...

      Many improvements reduce power consumption, and LCDs are fairly inefficient in converting power to light since they rely on blocking light. Maybe this will drive development of self-illuminating technologies. Or cause people to revolt against EU nanny-state tendencies (like mandating use of micro USB just before a far superior USB connector & standard is introduced!)

    2. strum

      Re: The fundamental problem for Greens...

      Not everything that's new is progress.

      Once upon a time we had Radium facecream and Uranium toothpaste. Both new and wonderful -and very bad for us.

      The only reason 'they' (we) are trying to reduce power consumptioon is because we can't afford more, and keep the planet viable for our grandchildren.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: The fundamental problem for Greens...

        "The only reason 'they' (we) are trying to reduce power consumptioon is because we can't afford more, and keep the planet viable for our grandchildren."

        We can and we can. The thing is we _can't_ with windmills or solar power - ever.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Philips...

    ...were right to sell their screen interests. This ain't goin' nowhere.

  25. Oh Bother

    Marketing logo?

    HDReady

  26. earl grey
    Trollface

    Where's the HDR pron?

    I want to see....er, nevermind.

    1. DropBear
      Trollface

      Re: Where's the HDR pron?

      Well yeah, but the love life of fireflies will look so much more amazing...

  27. Any mouse Cow turd

    Tactless and tacky

    Come on author, not proof reading your articles is tactless and getting your interviewee's name wrong is just tacky.

    Maybe you should have stuck to calling him Danny. ;)

  28. joed

    but will it blend?

    and lets not forget that my fancy broadband service can't handle anything over 720p - I'm quite sure I'm not alone here.

  29. crayon

    Great, they're going to do this in stages:

    "800 Nits, then 1500 Nits"

    then Philip's 4000 Nits,

    then Dolby Vision's 10000 Nits.

    So they want us to buy 4 generations of TVs before we get to HDR nirvana? Sounds a bit like the racketeers at the SD Card consortium who brings out incremental increases to capacity every few years.

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Cars get better every generation but that doesn't mean you're expected to buy a new one every year.

      Even in the CRT days, they were always claiming improvements and breakthroughs. Suggesting anything is different these days is perhaps symptomatic of RTS disorder (rose tinted spectacle)

      1. Truth4u

        "Cars get better every generation"

        Not really. All the engines are made by the same company anyway, they just change the cheap plastic bodywork each year to match trends and ensure it will damage easily.

        If they didn't have to meet EU standards for emissions and efficiency then they wouldn't and we would have the same crappy cars as China does.

  30. AnoniMouse

    HDR based on a false premise

    In the real world, human eyesight operates on a limited dynamic range - that's the purpose of the pupils, to adjust the aperture in response to different light levels. So one result of HDR will be to make our pupils work harder. Further, the brain's visual processing will, in practice, mask small variations in levels that are not the focus of attention - cf. preceptual masking in audio chains.

    HDR will, no doubt, be a vehicle for gimmicky effects not otherwise achievable, but is this really "progress"? Or necessary (other than to sustain TV manufacturers' revenues)? And what did hppen to 3D TV?

    1. Hungry Sean
      Stop

      Re: HDR based on a false premise

      stop, just stop. this is factually incorrect. Human visual dynamic range is about 20 stops accounting for rapid adaptation but not long adaptation (this is what you can see looking at a scene). Long adaptation including the constriction and dilation of the pupils extends us to about 30 stops.

  31. Truth4u

    meh

    just make sure you release the colour and HDR and resolution upgrades separately because I would love to waste my money on 3 TVs.

  32. davemcwish

    Creative Community

    Are they the same people from the Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation that tried to flog us 3D TV as the future and is trying again with 'Smart', '4k' and 'Curves' ?

  33. Christian Berger

    Actually this could make some things easier

    For example studio cameras today have a somewhat larger dynamic range than the TV signal. They typically squash their dynamic range into the smaller one available for television. This can lead to strange results. For example if you watch a white (light grey) wall where a bright blue LED light is shining on, the camera has a conflict between preserving the brightness or preserving the colour. Many television cameras now opt for the colour giving you a dark spot when you watch it on a monochrome TV. In extreme cases you can see the blue spot fading into darkness before suddenly becoming light grey again.

  34. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    What I don't want is a picture is 2 or 3 (or like 10) times as bright as it is now. Avoiding having stuff get washed out is good though.

    A note on this... when HD was somewhat new, there seemed to be a spate of films and shows where they went rather over the top on making everything razor sharp; eventually it was used to just present shows and movies at a higher resolution. My guess, if HDR catches on, there'll be a while where anywhere they'd use a lens flare, it'll be an astoundingly bright lens flare. I like the idea of having a bit better dynamic range between "almost black" and "black" though.

  35. Jim84

    Occulus Rift

    Could make good use of this tech without having to wait for standards to be finalized.

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