WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE BUYING HDR TV
What you need to know before buying HDR TV
More TVs are HDR compatible and brighter. But brighter isn't always a better option. Depending on the size of your TV and several other factors, it's possible that brighter images may be HDR or non HDR and it might cause eye fatigue. There are few things that you need to Know before Buying an HDR TV.
High dynamic range or HDR, is the latest TV tech. HDR is not about extra pixels. Every set capable of handling HDR video already can display 4K video. Instead, HDR makes images with widely varying lights and darks look better on your screen.
What Is HDR Video & HDR brightness?
If the "HDR" may sound familiar, it's because you've seen it as a setting in your smartphone camera. But the results are not great. It brings out details in the light and dark areas of a scene, usually by capturing multiple images at different exposures and merging them. HDR video is different. When watching HDR content, the better HDR TVs can produce super bright highlights. The sun or a streetlight will be noticeably brighter than the surrounding scene.
However, if you are watching TV in a dark room, those searing highlights may seem too bright, causing your eyes to become sore or scratchy. If you've ever stared at your phone in a dark room, you've probably experienced this. Any TV that's too bright in a dark room can cause eyestrain. it just has flashes of bright highlights and a more realistic treatment of real world bright and dark areas in general. Highlights of HDR content on HDR TVs are much brighter than "normal" standard dynamic range TVs.
How Are HDR TVs Fundamentally Different?
HDR isn't tied to a certain type of display technology, but almost all HDR sets thus far share a few traits. Vizio, Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, LG, TCL, and Hisense all have HDR capable TVs that are essentially super powered LCD 4K televisions. These sets can get really bright enough that looking at an onscreen sun or explosion can make you squint. Also, most HDR televisions aren't OLED sets. They use LCD panels, since they can get much brighter than OLEDs. Because OLEDs don't have backlight systems (each pixel turns on and off individually on an OLED) they can get much darker, and therefore produce deeper blacks. Earlier this month, LG and Panasonic both announced new 4K OLED TVs that can display HDR video. As you might expect, 4K HDR video is harder to find than normal 4K video. And depending on the source and your set, even when you do find it, you've got another format war to think about.
The best known HDR format is Dolby Vision, a proprietary format that requires a compatible set with a Dolby Vision decoder built in. Dolby Vision can handle 12-bit colour depth 68 billion colours and it's designed to support backlight systems that are at least four times more powerful than any current HDR TV has. Vizio was first to market with a Dolby Vision-compatible TV the Reference series sets from late last year—and LG, Philips, and TCL all trotted out Dolby Vision TVs at CES 2016. You can find Dolby Vision content on Vudu right now, and Netflix will offer it "soon." Some 4K Blu-ray discs will be Dolby Vision mastered, too.
There's another format called HDR 10. It will be the format supported by all 4K Blu-ray discs, and the UHD Alliance is backing it, too. HDR 10 "only" supports 10 bit colour, but there will certainly be much more HDR 10 content out there by end of the year.
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