I learned a depressing stat this week: HDR accounts for only around 5% of TV viewing

[What Hi-Fi?]

Figures from Philips suggest only a tiny portion of TV-watching is in HDR – even on flagship OLED and Mini LED models.

I learned a depressing stat this week: HDR accounts for only around 5% of TV viewing : Read more

 

[Friesiansam]

Innumerable more important things to worry about than, if people bother with HDR…

 

[WhiteKnight2020]

Innumerable more important things to worry about than, if people bother with HDR…

There are, but this is a site for people who are concerned with such things though.

 

[daveh75]

It's not really all that surprising when you consider many people are still happily watching low bitrate SD channels (even when an HD variant exists) getting on for nearly 20 years since HD channels first appeared.

 

[Friesiansam]

There are, but this is a site for people who are concerned with such things though.

Fair enough but, there are also many who care about sound quality, when listening to music but, watch so little TV that it is a very low priority.

 

[Ferret the Farmer]

Are Philips accounting for gaming though?

We have a 75" Mini LED Hisense in the media room, and it's used almost exclusively for playing PC games. Every single game released on the PC (and most consoles) now will default to HDR if it detects that it's available.

The same goes for Dolby Atmos; having a proper, discreet 5.1.2 speaker setup really ups the immersion, and most games will switch to it automatically if it's detected.

I reckon if they take into account the amount of time people spend playing computer games on their TVs, the figures would probably be quite a bit higher.

 

[12th Monkey]

Why would you be depressed by what others do (or don't)? Doesn't stop you making your own choices, and HDR seems to be here to stay.

 

[Ferret the Farmer]

Why would you be depressed by what others do (or don't)? Doesn't stop you making your own choices, and HDR seems to be here to stay.

Agreed, HDR is here to stay.

If you look back over the past few decades, any advancement that offers a genuine, tangeable improvement in picture quality and/or convenience has been accepted and stayed on the scene; everyone notices them without having to be familiar with the technicalities.

405 to 576 lines, colour etc were obvious upgrades. 16:9 aspect ratios offered a more natural viewing experience and wider field of view. Digital TV offered more choice, and the move away from CRTs enabled much larger screen sizes (although I'll take a good ol' Trinitron for retro gaming any day!)

High Definition drastically increased picture fidelity, and 4K basically became a necessity for the same reason when 55"+ displays became the norm.

3D, and to an extent, 8K, have fallen by the wayside because neither of them offer a worthwhile upgrade to the viewing experience for the average person on an average sized TV.

HDR offers a noticeable and easy upgrade in picture quality for everyone, even on smaller, cheaper sets. As such I'm sure it'll become the default standard eventually; it'll just take a little bit of time like the other tech we now take for granted.

I went into a branch of Hughes a few years back with my mum, who still doesn't know what 4K actually is. But when she spotted a 4K HDR TV on display even she said 'Oh my god, what's that? That's AMAZING!' 😂

 

[Amadeus1756]

I don’t watch enough TV to subscribe to the myriad streaming services, each of which may have a single series of interest to me at any one time. I wait for the series to end then subscribe to the relevant service for a month and binge watch over a week or so.
Finding HDR can be hard; BBC (unfortunately) doesn't seem to do very much HDR broadcasting and doesn't allow me to search for it, Apple TV (app) allows you to browse (find) HDR content easily;
If I subscribed to all the services mentioned in the original article, it’d cost me a decent sum and I’d probably not watch some of them in a given month.
To me, there needs to be some kind of spotify-like streaming service the allows me to subscribe to one service which offers all I want to watch but I can’t see that as being feasible unless it’s old content.

 

[Ferret the Farmer]

I don’t watch enough TV to subscribe to the myriad streaming services, each of which may have a single series of interest to me at any one time. I wait for the series to end then subscribe to the relevant service for a month and binge watch over a week or so.
Finding HDR can be hard; BBC (unfortunately) doesn't seem to do very much HDR broadcasting and doesn't allow me to search for it, Apple TV (app) allows you to browse (find) HDR content easily;
If I subscribed to all the services mentioned in the original article, it’d cost me a decent sum and I’d probably not watch some of them in a given month.
To me, there needs to be some kind of spotify-like streaming service the allows me to subscribe to one service which offers all I want to watch but I can’t see that as being feasible unless it’s old content.

Yeah the fragmentation of streaming services is ridiculous; I have Amazon Prime, but I have more stuff delivered to house than actually watching content on the video platform 😂

YouTube has a lot of 4K HDR content now. People scoff at YouTube, but there's a lot of decent content about now; Technmoan, Abroad in Japan, This Does Not Compute, Ahoy, etc. Some of Rambalac's night time strolls around urban Japan are probably the best demo videos for 4K HDR I've ever seen.