HDR helps a bit, but in some cases it makes it worse, because the HDR grade has been done by a colourist on a $15k mastering monitor in a pitch dark room, and assumes that anyone watching at home is doing likewise. The dynamic range crush of the SDR version actually results in a brighter (technically worse, but brighter) picture overall, and is sometimes slightly easier to see than the HDR on a cheaper HDR set with limited contrast or in non-ideal viewing environments (like the average living room with lights on or a window).
To be blunt, they are bad grading jobs when delivering a product to a general audience and there's not much getting around that. At least for HOTD it could be reasonably argued it's most egregious episode was simply one where there were significant filming issues at the time due to weather and they had to make the most of it in post (not very successfully, but starting from a bad base), but if we look at the Winterfell scenes from GOT for example that was just someone completely forgetting about average users.
HDR is the problem. If you change it to SDR it looks great! Unfortunately on my ipad I have to turn it to “low power mode” and that forces HDR off. In Apple’s infinite wisdom they do not have a setting to just turn off HDR.
I really don't get why they make this stuff so impossible to watch. Some TVs do have different visual modes ("games", "theatre", "movies"), but nobody ever switches those modes when using the TV for something else. And I only check that mode when things are too dark, and it always turns out it's already on the brightest setting.
Can we just agree that unless the TV is set to "theatre" mode, everything needs to be visible in normal daylight?
> Can we just agree that unless the TV is set to "theatre" mode, everything needs to be visible in normal daylight?
That would require:
1. agreeing on what a "normal" amount of daylight is
2. agreeing on the distribution of that daylight (one source vs. many)
3. agreeing on a permissible range of angles the TV must be relative to the light source(s)
4. standardizing which type of ambient light rejection film each TV must use
5. standardizing an average and peak brightness expected from all TV sets
6. standardizing a minimum real (not "dynamic") contrast ratio expected from all TV sets
7. requiring that each TV set sold is calibrated to Rec.709 for SDR and Rec.2020 for HDR
This list is laughable when you examine just how bad a typical "Best Buy™ Black Friday Special!" TV is, even after it has been put through the ringer by a professional ISF calibrator.
And yet this list is approached in the Computer Monitor scene, where boasting about proper color calibration is a selling point, even in a gaming monitor.
