this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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Steam Deck

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Am I doing HDR wrong? (feddit.nu)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I have never used an HDR display before so I'm not sure how it's supposed to look.

I have been playing Spider-man both with and without HDR and unless I'm staring right into the sun there is literally no difference. I have always heard people talk about HDR as something incredible but I'm honestly disappointed.

I also played Tetris effect: connected and HDR seemed to just make all the menus darker, but the rest looked the same.

Have I done something wrong or is this how it is supposed to be?

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

HDR stands for high dynamic range. It means you can have detail in shadows and highlights without losing detail in the middle.

At the end of the day, it's just how your computer or console talks to the display. It doesn't change what your display is capable of. It can't magically make colors more vibrant, for example. What it does instead, with a quality display, is allow you to make specific colors more vibrant while keeping their detail, without losing it elsewhere. It should usually be subtle, except in specific showcases designed to push the edges of what HDR can do.

It also doesn't make a mediocre display not mediocre. If it can't accurately present the whole range, receiving it doesn't help a lot.

Edit: oh, didn't realize this is the steam deck sub. You probably can get actual feedback on the quality of the display, then. But it will still really only make a difference to quality if the developers made a specific effort to utilize it. Realistically, that's mostly on high quality lighting the steam deck can't really do.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, the difference should be easily visible assuming one has quality source material and a nice display. I was kind of assuming OP was talking about using the Steam Deck in docked mode, but maybe that was a bad assumption.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Sorry I should have been more clear. I'm using the steam deck oled with the regular display, not an external display.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Someone else said the actual OLED doesn't support it. I never paid attention because I talked myself out of needing one, but if that's the case you obviously wouldn't see it on the deck screen.

I think you'd run into the limitations of render quality for most stuff 3D, though. There might be 2D games that play with it, and I'm guessing there are demo videos. I know my first (non-HDR) OLED I enjoyed trying some OLED demo clips out to really see what it could do.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

The oled deck does support hdr, dont know why some people are claiming ut doesn't.

General HDR is not supported in Linux yet though, only in games. So videos are unfortunately not a thing I can use for comparison.

[–] sfcl33t 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Can you describe how you are enabling it? In-game? Are you adjusting it in game after enabling it? Is your deck itself set to full brightness (you obviously won't get the full 1000 nits if not)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Enabled it in-game. Tried default setting at first then raised the in-game max brightness from 1000 nits to 1200 nits to see if there was a difference but there wasn't.

I just tried raising the deck brightness and that actually made it look a bit better. I feel kinda dumb now that I didn't try that before. Still not the amazing difference people made it out to be but i could actually see a little bit of difference now, at least when I look at something bright.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (3 children)

People make HDR out to be a big deal. In reality it is barely even noticeable. Like going from 4k to 8k or 120 to 240Hz. Most people can't even tell the difference.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the input. I got confused when people said Tetris effect looked "sooo much better" with HDR and I wasn't seeing any difference at all.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

HDR, from what I loosely understand, is related to the color gamut (the reds, greens, and blues) the display can produce. The sRGB coverage used on most displays today is the BT 709 standard. HDR is the newer DCI-P3 standard, and it covers a wider range of colors.

But that's why games and systems that don't support those extra colors won't give you any extra "oomph" on an HDR display (because it's only coded to utilize the capabilities of an SDR display).

I recommend this article for further reading: https://tomshardware.com/news/what-is-hdr-monitor,36585.html

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

HDR is actually the BT.2020 color gamut. Films mastered in HDR typically use DCI-P3 because that's the standard for theaters, but it's a smaller color gamut than BT.2020, which is what even HDR10 (the most common form of HDR with the lowest specs) supports.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The article I cited says that modern HDR hardware can't actually reach BT.2020, though that's the ultimate goal.

Has that changed?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

No, it can't. Most hardware is targeting DCI-P3 (though some goes beyond it) because that's what films are targeting in the mastering process, but HDR10 and all other HDR protocols (HDR10+, Dolby Vision, etc) all use the BT.2020 spec on the software side of things.

In other words, the software is ahead of the hardware for now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Idk about most people… the difference in black levels is willlld.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I still don't know how my HDR works or if. I feel like every time it's enabled it looks weird. Maybe because it's different, or maybe i'm doing it wrong but it's to much of a hassle to play with the settings. I feel like on the tv it's a bit different where i think it looks better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Honestly in many cases it looks worse, and even the opposite of "high dynamic range". I don't get the hype.

[–] osprior 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Likely you haven't seen it on a good display. It is quite noticeable and a big improvement on a nice display. HDR 400 is not really HDR and not worth running it in that mode if that's all your display supports.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I've seen it on SD OLED

As well as several HDR monitors.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

If nothing else it should make the screen a heck of a lot brighter, max brightness is limited to 600 nits with SDR content but goes up to 1000 nits with HDR. For comparison, the LCD deck peaks at around 400, while this is 1400 from a 32" monitor.

Might also require correct HDR settings from the game to work properly? Not sure, don't have one myself.

[–] jordanlund 0 points 7 months ago

I have 2 Samsung HDR televisions and I'll never buy another one. The image is dark, muddy and unwatchable in HDR. The only fix is disabling it on all connected devices.