A COLORFUL YEAR AHEAD
When it comes to HDR PC monitors, not all implementations are equal. But it’s not all bad news. Even mediocre HDR brings improved color performance. Strictly speaking, high dynamic range doesn’t automatically imply greater color fidelity. Instead, it’s about the contrast between the brightest and darkest elements of an image.
However, in practice, HDR standards typically make requirements of a display in terms of color space coverage and color fidelity. Take VESA’s DisplayHDR standard. Even lowly DisplayHDR 400 demands 95 percent coverage of the Rec.709 color space (the standard used for HDTVs), 10-bit per channel signal processing, and native 8-bit color rendering. Step up to DisplayHDR 600, and 99 percent of Rec.709 is required, plus 90 percent of the more demanding DCI-P3 color space, the standard for
professional digital cinema. DisplayHDR 600 and up monitors also need to support 10-bit color reproduction courtesy of at least dithering technology.
In short, any monitor that qualifies for at least the DisplayHDR 600 certification (there are more demanding DisplayHDR 1000 and 1400 standards) offers wide color gamut coverage. There are, of course, other standards. HDR10 is the standard created by the Consumer Technology Association. It’s based around the Rec.2020 color space used by UHD TVs, and if a display conforms with HDR10, it’s in about the same ball park for image performance as a DisplayHDR 1000 screen.
The slight confusion, of course, is that a given monitor may be capable of processing HDR10 content, but not capable of rendering its full dynamic range. But a display capable of HDR10 content support but not true HDR rendering, such as the BenQ DesignVue PD3220U, will have wide color gamut coverage. In the case of the BenQ, it achieves 95 percent of the DCI-P3 gamut, which will be sufficient for all but the most demanding professionals.