Windows Fall 2018 HDR Support

[illrigger]

I have spent the last two days tinkering with the new Windows 10 Fall 2018 Update's improved HDR support, and am very impressed.

As has been shown in reviews here, HDR support in Windows has been flaky, with big improvements coming in the Spring 2018 update that still left a lot of issues.

Up until this latest update, you had to keep tinkering with the HDR switch in Windows and the 444 mode in nVidia Control panel depending on what content you were using at the time. You could leave the HDR slider on, but you wanted to tweak 8-bit 444 mode on in nVidia Control Panel when you were doing work involving text, and you had to manually change to 10-bit 420 mode for HDR games to get the full color gamut or you would end up with the dreaded purple and green mess when you tried to run games in full screen.

Those days are over in the Fall update. All you need to do now is flip the HDR/WCG slider in Windows and adjust the brightness to your liking. From what I can tell, it looks like they have set the default mode to 8-bit 444 with HDR brightness on, and then use content detection to switch to whatever WCG mode is appropriate when something tries to use it. I tested with Far Cry 5 in HDR10 and scRGB modes, Mass Effect Andromeda in Dolby Vision mode, and several SDR games in 4k, 1440p and 1080p with nVidia control Panel set to Default Color Settings.

Everything just works! Text is clean in desktop mode (no sub-pixel artifacts visible at all). HDR games all detected the HDR capable screen, and the screen detected and switched to Dolby Vision mode when asked. Running SDR games in fullscreen exclusive mode worked exactly as expected, and resolution scaling did as well. Most importantly, not once have I seen the purple and green mess.

FYI, my testing is done on my main gaming rig:
Core i7 4770k
nVidia 1080 Ti FE
LG OLED55B7A connected via high speed HDMI 2.0 cable

It looks like this is likely what nVidia delayed their BFGD monitors for, and bodes very well for all of those mid-range HDR monitors that are cropping up everywhere lately. Time to revisit the topic (again) in a new video!

 

[astralmind]

OMG!

Just got the update Windows 10 October update (1809) and it messed up my config (well reset the Nvidia panel to use windows default). I have been struggling A LOT since I got my LG C8 with HDR related issues. It seems this latest update finally got HDR right according to a few people.

So far the best solution had been to keep the Windows HDR toggle off and use MPC+LAV+MADVR to get HDR content in excl full screen. I am running the TV in 'PC' mode with the PC icone selected because otherwise, the black levels were way off in HDR (major black crush) even though Nvidia was supposedly outputing in 4:2:2 12 bit Limited (vs Full). This also worked ok for some games (AC Odyssey) and not for others (Shadow of the Tomb raider). With the toggle off, any non-fullscreen content wouldn't work with HDR either.

If I now turn the toggle on, Windows looks ok (previously there would be some HDR induced issues in SDR content, icons with weird colors etc) and I do see the output being set to RGB 8 bit (with dithering) HDR Color space by default when browsing online. However, because the TV detects a permanent HDR color space signal, it sets itself in HDR Mode (Technicolor Expert) regardless of the content being played - no more HDR logo popping up to confirm all is working ok. I'm concerned that HDR isn't kicking in as it should (ie, switching to 4:2:2 and 12 bit vs staying limited to 8 bit which would work but be sub optimal).Anyway I can test this to get confirmation some how ? I'd like to find some sample Dolby Vision content as I don't have any readily available.

My other concern is that if I leave the toggle on, the TV remains permenantly in HDR mode which by default has OLED light level set to 100 (which I understand should be this way for HDR to work optimally). Am I at risk on prematurely damaging the panel vs running in SDR mode with OLED light set to 60 like I usually am or is the windows brightness setting newly implement for SDR content while in HDR mode effectively balancing things out ?

THanks!