Non-profit standards association VESA has put forth a new open standard called DisplayHDR for defining HDR specifications and performance for PC laptop and desktop LCDs. The new test specification, dubbed Display HDR 1.0, defines a transparent testing methodology and definitions along with specifying three tiers of HDR system performance that will identify displays as being certified for minimum, mid-range, and high-end HDR with their respective badges of DisplayHDR 400, DisplayHDR 600, and DisplayHDR 1000. Consumers will be able to easily identify which panels have HDR and how they stack up.
The new HDR standard was devised by VESA with input from over two dozen of its member companies including major OEMs of displays, panels, graphics cards, CPUs, display drivers, and color calibration providers. DisplayHDR is reportedly a fully open and transparent standard with automated tools that end users can download and run to verify the results for themselves. The standard includes three peak luminance tests, two contrast measurement tests (native and local dimming), color testing and validation of BT.709 and DCI-P3 color gamuts, bit-depth requirement tests (see below), and HDR backlight response time measurements.
DisplayHDR 400 represents the minimum entry-level tier of HDR per the VESA specification and specifies that a LCD display must feature at least 400 nits brightness (both short, local bursts and full screen flashes), 8-bit color depth, HDR-10, and global dimming. VESA notes that many non-HDR displays that advertise as supporting 8-bit colors, it is actually a 6-bit panel that uses a dithering algorithm to achieve a simulated 8-bits. DisplayHDR specifies true 8-bit at a minimum, and for DisplayHDR 600 and DisplayHDR 1000 displays must achieve 10-bit depth using 8-bit panels combined with 2-bit dithering at a minimum.
Display and PC manufacturers have reportedly had their hands on the DisplayHDR test specification for some time now and are working on validating their displays so that they can offer products with the DisplayHDR logos. New product announcements and demonstrations are expected during CES 2018 next month with DisplayHDR compatible products showing up as early as Q1 2018. VESA notes that while DisplayHDR currently only targets LCDs, it hopes to extend the open standard to include OLED displays in the future.
I think this is a good thing as there is a lot of confusing and conflicting advertising out there when it comes to HDR. A vendor neutral specification and badge that can also be independently tested may be just what the display market needs to push HDR into the mainstream.
dunno why they didnt just go
dunno why they didnt just go with a basic
1000 for 10bit
800 fpr 8bit
600 for 6bit
and panels with dithering sit between with a ranking of 700 or 900
The 400, 800 and 1000 are in
The 400, 800 and 1000 are in reference to peak light output measured in cd/m2 (or nits).
The bit depth is only part of the spec. Also it is a minimum for each level and could vary giving us a DisplayHDR400 with a 12bit panel and a DisplayHDR1000 with a 10bit panel if a manufacturer so chose.
Regardless this is very exciting news.
It doesn’t seem like 10 bit
It doesn’t seem like 10 bit native panels would be that hard to do. Perhaps TN technology has some limitations that make it hard to do? I have an old panel that is 10 bit capable, but it is IPS based (dell ultra sharp U3011). If they could do 10 bit back in 2011 or so, then it doesn’t seem like it should be difficult now. It was about 1500$ new though, so it wasn’t cheap back in 2011; I bought it because I wanted 16×10 form factor and it was also the last of the CCFL displays. Most LED backlight displays I looked at had terrible color accuracy by comparison. It took them a while to get good color accuracy with LED backlights. The U3011 can use close to 200 W to achieve excellent color accuracy though, so I am kind of waiting for 4K at 120 HZ, hopefully with quantum dots as an upgrade. The power consumption on the quantum dot TVs seems quite good. It produces very narrow frequency ranges, so that translates into higher efficiency and better color accuracy.
Probably because 6 bit isn’t
Probably because 6 bit isn’t HDR.
6-bit panels are ridiculous.
6-bit panels are ridiculous. It would be nice if HDR capable panels are all at least 10 bit native. I have seen some cheap HDR TVs that sounded like they just support accepting HDR input; that is they aren’t actually an HDR capable display other than the electronics to convert it to something that the mediocre panel can display. They definitely need some standards here. I don’t know how much difference there is between a true 10 bit panel and an 8 bit panel with dithering. A 6 bit panel only has 64 possible brightness levels for a sub-pixel. I assume the laptops at Best Buy with cheap TN panels are probably 6 bit. Those look like garbage, but that might be due to other things, not just the bitness of the panel. An 8 bit panel would be 256 and a 10 bit is 1024 levels. If you are going to have a significantly higher max brightness, then limiting it to 64 levels is not a good idea.
https://xkcd.com/927/
May be
https://xkcd.com/927/
May be relevant…
Not really VESA is big
Not really VESA is big https://www.vesa.org/about-vesa/member-companies/
What about 12bit and maybe
What about 12bit and maybe VESA 1200!