Another long one, sorry!
Due to never really using the smart remote, I wasn’t aware of this. Useful to know!
Possibly worth getting a quote from them? Depending on how much the dimming annoys you and how reasonable their usual prices are.
The placebo effect would play heavily into any difference you saw. Especially given you know the technical benefits of FALD and due to how negative your feelings are generally towards the NU.
IRL the perceived noticeable differences to your eye would likely be no better than the NU with bias lighting.
We are doing it because once the FALD placebo improvement wears off, you would be stuck with another expensive TV that didn’t match your needs.
You would genuinely see no better improvement in blacks, spending $900 on a FALD as you would spending $30 on a D65 white lighting strip for bias lighting.
Either you have a bad panel (which is what I’d put my money on), or you are very sensitive to noticing bloom.
Ironically, I would hope it is just that you have a bad panel.
As if you are sensitive to it, then it is even more likely that you’ll notice it on any LCD based TV. And with panel variances/panel lottery, demoing a model in a store will be useless, because the panel of the TV you buy might not be as good.
Which puts you back into OLED, or ideally projector, territory.
I know Samsung, Sony, LG and Toshiba all released edge-lit models in 2019. Only the LG featured local dimming, and it performed worse than the NU8000.
It is pretty much guaranteed that at least those manufacturers will also have 2020 models with edge-lit TVs.
Generally speaking; the manufacturers that don’t have edge-lit TVs only have direct-lit models in the lower ranges, with them putting FALD only in their premium range models.
@Razer08 has beaten me to this now because I was trying to answer everything in one, but I’ll try and add to it where I can.
Short answer:
- It can dim the picture, it all depends on how the HDR is implemented; such as the Star Wars original trilogy and a lot of the Netflix HDR shows.
- No, they aren’t mastered at 100 nits; but that doesn’t always matter either (see long answer). I think the thing @Vagval13 might have been on about is that the value for “diffuse white”. HDR maintains the limit for "diffuse white" (such as a white walls, paper, etc.) at 100 nits; which is the same as for SDR. Luminance above 100 nits is restricted to highlights. This is the case for both HDR10 and DV (which promulgated the PQ EOTF).
Long answer:
HDR is a bit of a Wild West ATM. Normally, a HDR movie is mastered in either 1000 or 4000 nits; though there are some done in 8000 or even 10,000. But, and it’s a big but, this doesn’t mean this is what you are always seeing. As
@Razer08 pointed out, it is a bit of a marketing misconception; for the most part the nit rating refers to what level of monitor was used for the grading…not what the movie is graded at.
When we say ''4000 nits mastered/graded'' it doesn't mean that the movie will have up to 4000 nits levels; it can be much lower or even much higher. Often, even though a movie is mastered on a monitor of a particular grade, the metadata contains 2 other values which have far more impact on how the movie presentation is viewed:
- maxCLL - Maximum Content Light Level; the brightest sub-pixel of a frame (nits)
- maxFALL - Maximum Frame-Average Light Level; the max APL of entire frame (nits)
Some examples of movies that have been under or over graded can be found in the attached pictures below; I have named the pictures accordingly.
Knowing what you are getting in terms of HDR, is made worse by the fact that the movies can differ by region, based on which POST house handled the mastering for that region’s disc. E.G. Blade Runner 2049 is Mastered at 10,000nits REC2020 colour space in the US release, but 4000nits DCI-P3 colour space in the UK. However, the UK version is actually brighter overall, with a maxCLL of 457nits and a maxFALL of 179nits; compared to the US maxCLL of 181nits and maxFALL of 73nits. So even though the US master is specified higher, the UK disc is much brighter in HDR presentation.
Other examples can be found on the HDR metadata frame info sample picture below, which also shows the maxCLL and maxFALL for those discs in their respective regions.
For movies which have had their MaxCLL & MaxFALL set to 0 nits (usually the 20th Century Fox releases), they typical default to the BDA recommendation of 1000 maxCLL and 400 maxFALL. Others can have calculated numbers based on percentages of the grading.
In the instances where the mastering was done with a 1000/4000/etc nits capable monitor, but the masterer wants it to contain brighter content exceeding this nits rating, the colorist has to use the waveform and RGB histogram and leave un-clipped content above the nit threshold of his monitor.
So as you can see, with a lack of standards currently set for HDR, it is a bit of a mess.
Lastly, below is a link to a spreadsheet with a list of movies on with their metadata shown, as displayed by a HDFury...for those interested.
UHD discs Sheet is retired. No additional titles will be added. Date Added,Title,Studio,Country,Primaries,MaxMDL,MinMDL,MaxCLL,MaxFALL,HDR10 Metadata reported by HDFury Integral/Linker/Vertex 02-27-2018,10 Cloverfield Lane,Paramount Pictures,USA,DCI-P3,1000,0.0001,0,0,87:01:1a:21:02:00:c2:33:c4:...
docs.google.com