Did Windows just got proper HDR support?

General
1

Since i remeber switching HDR on in windows made everything look washed out. Since last update i did yesterday, its opposite. When im in sdr mode colors looked wrong and i need to switch to HDR to get decent image.
Am i fooling myself and something got broken on my end? :smiley:

2

Windows 10 have had “proper HDR support” for regular SDR content since v1803. Before that, SDR content would look dim and washed out when HDR was enabled for a display.

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3

It’s always looked that way to me. SDR mode oversaturates colors. I can’t even run an HDR display in SDR.

4

Just out of curiousity, if I have an 800nit display, under the paper white section it says It should be under 1/2 of my peak white brightness, so should I set the paper white setting to around 400? Or would the default 250 be okay with 800nits, I hope that makes sense

5

I wonder if this has to do with the display model or something. People complaining about the HDR mode for SDR content is far more common than people complaining about the SDR mode of the display.

https://reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/k3agg7/hdr_on_pc_sucks/

6

Probably, most displays that call themselves HDR shouldn’t be doing so.

7

I don’t know, enabling HDR in Windows still makes everything look very dim. I always have it on for browsing, but when watching or playing native SDR content that I can’t force into HDR, I have to turn it off. And this is with an LG CX. Windows just does not do a good job at (reverse) tone-mapping SDR to HDR.

8

SDR’s not supposed to be tonemapped to HDR. It should be a fraction, maybe about 10-20% of HDR levels.

9

But not in an HDR container. SDR in an HDR container will not look the same as native SDR, and that’s my point. Windows HDR looks bad because it’s not properly tone-mapping SDR content to HDR, it’s just slightly adjusting brightness (based on the brightness slider).

10

It’s adjusting the whitepoint used for the SDR tonemap.

AdvancedColorInfo.SdrWhiteLevelInNits Property (Windows.Graphics.Display) - Windows UWP applications | Microsoft Docs

I don’t have access to that in my Win32 software, only UWP software does. Or I’d base certain aspects of Special K’s UI on those settings.

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11

NVIDIA’s 457.51 GPU drivers have the following bug: “When setting the refresh rate higher than 100Hz, the color format switches from RGB to ycbcr422. [3053990]”

That might be what you’re experiencing. Update to the latest graphics drivers that came out a couple days ago if you’re on NVIDIA.

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