Windows 10 and HDR

[Selogon]

Hello friends,
I’m wondering what your observations are: can Windows 10 do correct HDR?
When toggling HDR in Win10, the screen gets the incorrect greenish tint, which I’m told should be ignored when ingame.
But is it the case? I keep trying HDR on my TV (which is HDR10 capable), but I cannot enjoy it, even though I read it can really elevate game visuals. The colours become brownish/greyish/generally less attractive.
My question : is it some error on my part? An error in my eyes? is it how HDR is supposed to look? Would it look correct on another platform than Windows?

[alms]

I didn’t have the greenish tint problem, however last time I checked HDR had little usability on the desktop.

For games, it shouldn’t be a problem, as long as your TV is set up correctly and there is no other problem with drivers and so on.

[Selogon]

I see. Seems you are lucky, I did not find anywhere anyone not complaining how HDR makes the colours weird in Win 10 on the desktop (or maybe I find posts on forums from people with the issue only, could be)
However I notice the same behaviour on my desktop with my HDR monitor (which is not supposed to do HDR so well, but I use for testing purposes).
On the other hand maybe that’s what HDR is supposed to look like, all the contours are very pronounced, a bit like there’s chromatic aberration going on and such. I don’t have any other point of reference so it’s why I thought of asking around here.

[alms]

You might want to re-read my previous post:

last time I checked HDR had little usability on the desktop.

For games, it shouldn’t be a problem

IIRC on the desktop you should notice colors being de-saturated, but no tints.

a bit like there’s chromatic aberration going on and such

It’s not chromatic aberration, but your TV likely being set to the wrong color format. Like I said:

as long as your TV is set up correctly

[Selogon]

Not tint, probably my bad wording then.

I see what you mean about the TV settings, but as I said I feel I see the same thing on my PC monitor.
Maybe I simply should get used to it or look into setting the TV, since I don’t use any other content in HDR (no movies and such). Maybe then I have not noticed before if something was off

Thank you for your input, I was looking exactly for that.

[Dave_L]

When a display goes into HDR mode the colours tend to go cooler than they are in non-HDR mode. Most TVs and monitors keep a different set of settings when HDR is on than off, so you can change the white balance settings and stuff to push it warmer if you’d like. But doing so risks actually negating the HDR when you’re actually running content that actually supports HDR. The non-HDR settings on my TV are fairly warm/yellow, following a calibration guide for this particular model, but when I click on HDR in windows everything goes very cool/blue, and I’m using the recommended settings for HDR10 mode from the same guide.

The Windows desktop is not HDR, even when you hit the HDR mode toggle in display settings, so isn’t representative of how HDR should look. There might be some desktop applications that can leverage that HDR mode (I would assume some high end photo and video editing software would benefit from it), and if you’ve got a video file with HDR you’d probably have to turn that setting on to watch it properly, but the regular old Windows desktop isn’t suddenly pushing its pixel values outside the 0-255 range when it’s on.

By that same token, turning on HDR in the Windows Display Settings doesn’t automatically make any game you fire up suddenly be HDR. If the game doesn’t actually support running in HDR, then you are going to get crappy looking colours because the monitor is now running in a colour space that the game doesn’t actually support.

I don’t have a bunch of HDR capable games, but of the ones that I DO have: Shadow of the Tomb Raider requires me to hit the HDR mode toggle in Windows display settings to expose the HDR setting in SoTR’s own video settings, which I then also have to turn on. Tetris Effect (and presumably other Unreal Engine based games with HDR support like Borderlands 3) I can just turn on HDR in the game’s own settings without having to touch the HDR setting in Windows display settings.

[Selogon]

I understand how to turn on and activate the HDR mode, and how it would not look good if a game is not made for it. Thanks for your input though!
No, my “issue” is that I have suddenly been able to activate HDR, and I’m not sure I like it.
BUT do I not really like it because it’s an acquired taste, or maybe because its benefits are oversold?
OR my set up is wrong?
From what I understand yes, it works as it should on my set up, but maybe I’m not used to the look and will with time.
It’s kind of the confirmation I was looking for

[alms]

maybe because its benefits are oversold?

Well, I’m not going to argue in favor of marketing hype, most of the world out there aims to make you feel dissatisfied with what you have so that you constantly buy new stuff.

Some trends are certainly less justifiable than others: super high refresh displays is one of them.

I’d rate HDR as fairly legit but not quite there in terms of actual implementation. I wonder if your dissatisfaction has perhaps more to do with that than HDR itself.

Most displays on the market aren’t even close approximations of what HDR should be like. Some say you can only get HDR with OLED, and even then just being OLED isn’t a guarantee of satisfactory HDR.

For an illustration of this latter reality, all you have you to do is look at mobile phones.

I see what you mean about the TV settings, but as I said I feel I see the same thing on my PC monitor.

I’d say that’s weird, maybe there are issues due to the specifics of your set up, I’m not entirely sure.

[Selogon]

I’d say that’s weird, maybe there are issues due to the specifics of your set up, I’m not entirely sure.

Yes, difficult to tell…
I think it’s simply that I’m not used to what it looks like.
I just for the sake of testing tried an HDR movie, and yeah it does look good.
I never did even try that before. It’s good, better ? Unsure, but very good anyhow.

So to summarize, I think it’s simply my perception of things, maybe in the games I tried (AC Valhalla, CyberPunk,Fenyx Rising), colours are pushed hard on purpose?

[Dave_L]

It’s possible there’s an issue with your cable. If you’re not using a proper high speed HDMI cable (or if the cable you’re using is just going bad) the HDR activation bit could be getting through, but the actual extended colour range might not be. That might explain the chromatic aberration that you’re describing.

[SephKing]

HDR looks awful in windows on both my TV and Monitor.

I have a G32QC and 55 inch Samsung Q90R in my office and, whenever I activate HDR in windows, it makes all the colors look really washed out, reduces the brightness and looks all round bad. When playing games it looks good (on the TV at least), although I can’t say I notice a huge difference in most games.

[LexW]

Most displays on the market aren’t even close approximations of what HDR should be like. Some say you can only get HDR with OLED, and even then just being OLED isn’t a guarantee of satisfactory HDR.

But how does one even know? That’s the problem with HDR. Until you’ve seen it done right, for a sustained period, in conditions relevant to your home conditions, it’s unlikely that you can make an accurate enough to comparison to tell if your hardware, software or some general part of the setup is at fault for it looking crap.

I mean, we have a TV that can do HDR. Does it really look much better than normal 4K? No. But is that the TV? The cable? The input device? I assume it’s the TV, but I have no idea. Likewise my monitor can do HDR, but it looks crap - obviously vastly worse in Windows, like totally washed-out, and depending on the game, somewhere between slightly and vastly worse.

I have a friend with a new TV, and Xbox XS, and definitely a brand-new cable, and HDR - does that look good? Well the black is slightly blacker, and that’s about all I can tell. This isn’t a vision issue, I have ridiculously good vision and colour-sense (especially for my age, still don’t wear glasses at 42). I have seen displays in stores which were incredible, and were HDR, though they all seemed to say “QLED”, and I have no idea if a home setup would get that much out of them.

Some trends are certainly less justifiable than others: super high refresh displays is one of them.

Don’t agree if we’re talking for games. I can easily see the benefit of 144Hz refresh, because you can just turn off Vsync and get higher framerates and less/no tearing. It’s also really obvious how it’s even easier to track/spot moving objects on those monitors as compared to lower-Hz-rate ones.

Obviously they’re pretty pointless for phones and TVs which aren’t used for gaming for where that Hz-rate can’t be used at full-resolution and stuff (or the things connected to the TV can’t do a high enough framerate to make it worthwhile).

Maybe you’re talking about 240Hz and up though and I can’t comment on that as I’ve never seen it go.

[Selogon]

But how does one even know? That’s the problem with HDR. Until you’ve seen it done right, for a sustained period, in conditions relevant to your home conditions, it’s unlikely that you can make an accurate enough to comparison to tell if your hardware, software or some general part of the setup is at fault for it looking crap.

I mean, we have a TV that can do HDR. Does it really look much better than normal 4K? No. But is that the TV? The cable? The input device? I assume it’s the TV, but I have no idea. Likewise my monitor can do HDR, but it looks crap - obviously vastly worse in Windows, like totally washed-out, and depending on the game, somewhere between slightly and vastly worse.

I have a friend with a new TV, and Xbox XS, and definitely a brand-new cable, and HDR - does that look good? Well the black is slightly blacker, and that’s about all I can tell. This isn’t a vision issue, I have ridiculously good vision and colour-sense (especially for my age, still don’t wear glasses at 42). I have seen displays in stores which were incredible, and were HDR, though they all seemed to say “QLED”, and I have no idea if a home setup would get that much out of them.

You are touching to the heart of my question.
I was not impressed by HDR (which was new to me). So, should I be more impressed? Is my setup wrong?
It’s really what I wanted to know lol.
Apparently everything works as it should on my end. Maybe my TV is not the most expensive and best quality, but is that why, I cannot decide!

[Selogon]

Don’t agree if we’re talking for games. I can easily see the benefit of 144Hz refresh, because you can just turn off Vsync and get higher framerates and less/no tearing. It’s also really obvious how it’s even easier to track/spot moving objects on those monitors as compared to lower-Hz-rate ones.

Obviously they’re pretty pointless for phones and TVs which aren’t used for gaming for where that Hz-rate can’t be used at full-resolution and stuff (or the things connected to the TV can’t do a high enough framerate to make it worthwhile).

Maybe you’re talking about 240Hz and up though and I can’t comment on that as I’ve never seen it go.

Yep as well. I enjoy 144Hz on my PC, but I think I know what Alms mean.
I made a comment somewhere on an article here on RPS, where I said that I feel like RTX is (at the moment) an expensive trick made to make us enthusiast spend big money. I mean by that the impact on perf is so huge, that we would have to splurge a lot to get great FPS. Yes it does look nice but I still like smooth gaming for now.
240Hz is a bit like that, I feel. CS Go will do it I’m sure, but how about a game like Control with full wack RTX at more than 1080p? Maybe Geforce 5XXX?

[Don_Reba]

HDR is actually about two things:

1. High dynamic range (what HDR means, strictly speaking), where pixels can emit light brighter than 80 nits. Although, in practice, it’s not impressive if it’s less than 400.
2. Wide gamut, where displays can show colours outside of the sRGB gamut. More vibrant red, green, and blue than the sRGB ones.

The main problem is usually with the second point — the gamut. Almost all content, including almost all games, is authored to the sRGB gamut. When you ask Windows to ignore HDR, what it usually does is simply pretend that your display’s gamut is sRGB: when an image asks for the most saturated red, for example, it won’t give you the most saturated sRGB red but the most saturated red your display can show. This makes everything look much more vibrant.

When you ask Windows to be HDR-aware, though, it has a choice to make with respect to non-HDR content: should it be pedantic and display it using only sRGB colours or should it display it using all the colours your display can show? It chooses the former, and that’s why it looks dull.

So, we need much more intelligent HDR support from Windows, but we also need games with wide gamut support. We are not there yet. It’s going to take a while.

Meanwhile, what you can usually do is, if your display allows it, turn on HDR in Windows and set your display to expand the gamut on its own. It might not be exactly accurate, but it will be pretty.