The Offset Podcast - The Offset Podcast EP034: Is HDR Really Taking Off?

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

In this episode of The Offset Podcast we’re asking & discussing the question - Is HDR really taking off?At first blush, the answer is yes, but the really, the answer is decidedly more nuanced.  Specifics discussed in this episode include:HDR seems to be everywhere - streaming platforms, consumer electronics, professional gear with billions made in investmentWhile wildly available, access to HDR content is still often based on  ‘level’ of plan. Disconnect for consumers between HDR capable hardware and plansThe role the iPhone has played in helping spread HDRAlthough available & accessible, HDR is still widely weighted to the ‘higher end’.  Mid and entry level productions aren’t utilizing HDR. Why? And how can that change?The language of HDR has become conservative and very similar to SDR versions making differentiation harderA safe approach to HDR may be tied to derived downstream HDR and SDR performance.   Investment in expensive gear (reference monitoring) for what many see as niche is also a contributing factorHow to sell and consistency in selling HDR content is importantMany feel that HDR is something that is being dictated to them…but for technical not creative reasonsImportant to remember HDR technology and workflows are still relatively newStunning HDR content does exist and shows what can be done (Ian Vertovec examples)Given artists space and time to work on HDR can produce amazing resultsIf you like the show be sure to like and subscribe where ever you find The Offset Podcast

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Offset Podcast. And today we're taking a look at whether HDR has really taken off or maybe not. Stay tuned. This podcast is sponsored by Flanders Scientific, leaders in color accurate display solutions for professional video. Whether you're a colorist, an editor, a DIT, or a broadcast engineer, Flanders Scientific has a professional display solution to meet your needs. Learn more at flanderscientific.com. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another installment of the Offset Podcast. I'm one of your hosts,

Robbie Carman. With me as always is Joey Deanna. Hey, Joey, how are you doing, buddy? Hey, everyone. Joey, so today I want to talk about something that I think maybe is slightly controversial. I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's not, but maybe it's just me that thinks it's like, ooh, we've got to be careful here. And that's the idea of whether HDR has really taken off for what do you think? Probably over a decade now, we've been talking about HDR and some flavor. I mean, we've done a lot of training about it. We've done a lot of evangelizing about it. We talked about everything from HDR, you know, 10 and 10 plus and Dolby Vision and all these workflows. You know, and recently this kind of came to a little bit of, you know, the forethought in our thinking

just because I'm sure everybody who's watching the episode is aware of Steve Gedlin's, I guess, seminar on HDR and that was kind of, you know, received in different levels of, you know, acceptance and pushback and all sorts of stuff throughout the, the web. But, you know, I wanted to take a little bit, a little bit of a slightly different spin on it for this episode. Because, you know, it's, again, it's something that we've been talking a lot about over the best decade. But the question I have for today, has it really taken off, right? It's something that you always hear about, but where kind of is the current state of it? And I think that's a little debatable,

depending on who you ask, what the view on it is, what level you are in terms of production and post-production and the type of content you're doing. And it's a little more nuanced than just, yes, it's taken off or no, it's not taken off. So I want to explore that thought, those thoughts today. And I guess we'll start out with kind of the first part of this is it does seem to be everywhere.

Would you agree with that assessment that HDR, no matter where you look on streaming platforms, on the web, et cetera, it's there. And it seems to be everywhere, but I'm not sure that's the best metrics of, metric of has it taken off just because it's in a lot of places, you know?

Yeah, because if you look at kind of the penetration of HDR in the market, in terms of hardware, it's everywhere, Almost every device being sold right now that has a screen can show an HDR image and can decode an HDR signal and is basically ready for any flavor of HDR. I believe the stat is now either 8 or 9 out of 10 consumer televisions being sold support not just HDR but Dolby Vision. And Android supports it. So every Android mobile device, all the Apple mobile ecosystem supports.

it. So basically every smartphone and tablet that's available for sale. And now we're seeing it on computer displays, on desktop computers, laptop computers, basically anything that you buy with a screen is going to support HDR, which is like, you know, compared to the last big transition we had, which was SD to HD, I think that happened a lot slower in terms of displays, right? Yeah. We, we, we are getting HDR available everywhere. And now we're seeing it on services available everywhere as well. All of the TV streaming platforms support it. And every day we're getting more and more online streaming platforms, social media

platforms supporting HDR. So it does, from an availability standpoint, it's absolutely everywhere. So why does it now kind of feel like? Why isn't everything HDR? Why isn't everything that we're doing and producing? Exactly. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel right.

And I think that's all spot on. I think clearly the hardware at the consumer level, the hardware at the, you know, the professional level, the mastering level is there. You know, it seems like, you know, if you're going to invest in a new reference monitor these days, you're probably going to invest in one that can do, you know, varying levels of HDR performance there. But I agree. It does feel like it's certain off. And, you know, with the OTT platforms, it's kind of a weird thing because I think you're right. Yes, they all offer whether it's just straight HDR 10 or whether it's Dolby Vision or whatever.

You know, I mean, you can't go on Netflix and not see HDR content. Same for these other platforms. But there's a slight little caveat or asterisk by that if you have the right plan, right? You know, all of these, all of these OTT platforms, yeah, the availability is there. but they're differentiating a little bit, technically differentiating, between if you have the entry-level plan, yeah, you're probably not going to get HDR, Dolby Atmos, etc. That's going to be reserved, you know, same thing with the U.HD,

that's going to be reserved for the higher-tier plans that, you know, I have to question how many people in the consumer landscape don't put those two things together, right? They go, cool, I just went to, you know, big box electronics store, got my HDR television, they get home, and they hook up their basic level OTT plan and think that they're watching HDR, right? I mean, I would have to imagine there's a few people who fall into that category

who have the right hardware, but haven't married it up to the right plan. As much as I hate to admit it, I think there's probably more people like that than not like that. And I think that's kind of one of the bigger problems because no matter how much, us nerds are into it, if it's not the default, most consumers won't know it's there.

I had family members that up until very recently had a standard deaf cable box plugged composite into an HD TV with it being stretched horizontally and they didn't know. Like they, to them, that's just what TV looked like and nothing seemed wrong to them. So it's funny about that. I had to, I had a similar experience with a family member and I went over to their house and they had run over. I don't know how they did this, but they had run over the cable attaching their cable box to their TV with like the vacuum cleaner and split the cable. You know what it was? It was a S video cable like with that big girl end.

And I couldn't find an S video cable anywhere. Like anywhere. I was like, I don't have any more of those in the box of tricks. But no, I agree. I mean, and I think that there's, you know, a sponsor of the show and good friend Bram, Bram Desmond, FSI said to us once, until the base level plans kind of incorporate HDR, then maybe it really hasn't taken off. And I, you know, and I didn't really put too much thought into that at the time when they said that. But now that I think about it, that is probably likely a big mismatch where people go, oh, my new TV looks great, not even realizing that they're not. leveraging the HDR content.

Yeah. Now, one thing where that is the case, and I've said it before, I'll say it again, I think the biggest evangelist for HDR in terms of showing it to the consumer is the iPhone, right? Because, and it's interesting, it's not even for video. The default iPhone configuration takes photos in HDR. And if you send them via IMSESE, to another iPhone, they display in HDR completely by default. You would not believe how many people just think their iPhone takes better pictures

because now it's displaying it in HDR. And when you get a picture from somebody, somebody texts you a picture, it comes up in HDR, it looks beautiful, pops off the screen, people are not knowing that that's what HDR looks like and not associating it with things like their TV and streaming content and things like that. There's a big disconnect there. And I think it's an opportunity for kind of evangelizing the consumer a bit. Yeah. And I think Apple in particular has done a fantastic job in the Apple way of putting that stuff in front of people without, you know, hitting them over the head with the technical aspects of it.

And, you know, and there are some, you know, obvious differences with HDR playback and performance on a, a mobile device like that versus a consumer TV. We don't have to get into all the details about how the various levels of Dolby Vision and stuff work with that. But I do think they've done a good job. Let's take a slightly different spin at this. Now that we've acknowledged, there might be a slight disconnect between people buying capable hardware and then the services that they're using.

You know, the other question that I have about this, and when I talk to colleagues, you know, of ours and friends of ours and stuff like that about, you know, what they're doing, it just kind of hits me really hard that HDR still seems to be for a lot of higher-end content and it really, even though people have prepared themselves, they've bought HDM monitors, they're doing a couple of HDR projects a year, you know, one movie here, one movie there, whatever.

It just seems like the middle-level production and consequently the post-production services for those middle-level productions, and low-end productions for sure, just haven't really embraced this, right? It's just sort of like, you know, oh, like, well, what do we need that for, right? And I was thinking about this before we started recording today, and I think there's a lot of reasons for that. Cost is a factor.

You know, it does take some extra time, does take some extra effort, does, you know, at least on the post-production side, does require some investment in the gear and stuff to do it. But, you know, one of the things I thought of, and I want to get your take on this is, you know, early on, I think I was really excited about the language of HDR. And what I meant me by that is that, okay, we are going to have something here that is clearly and demonstratively different than the SDR content that we're watching, right? And early on, it felt like people were doing that, really were cranking it to 11 and kind of making it its own thing.

In the past couple years, I think you're really hard pressed to tell the difference between, in a lot of cases between the SCR version of a show and the HDR version of the show because it seems like everybody is super conservative, super gun-shy about pushing it, right? So yeah, you might have a great, you know, an HDR grade that's 175 to 250 nits of peak luminance at, you know, with hotspots.

And it's like, what's the point? Like, why are we doing? And I think that like, you know, that pushback has been, well, it's so different. I hate it. It's ugly. It gets into some of the sentiment from the discussion about this.

But I think it's like it's disappointing to me that that's where we are with the language of HTR. And I think it's making it for that middle-sized company just a really tough argument. Like, why would we pay extra money to basically have the same look and feel that we do now? And it's kind of turned a little bit into the higher-end productions is just doing it

because it's part of the deliverable to get their show on the OTT platform. But it doesn't really feel like they want to do it. It doesn't really feel like they put a lot of effort into it sometimes. I don't know. Am I wrong about that? Has the, have we regressed about the language of HDR in the past couple years? I think so.

I tend to think so. There are so many films and shows that are HDR and are graded in a way that, basically, I think a lot of people are using the same print emulation looks that they've always used because they're really pretty in their own way. And then they're kind of encapsulating them into HDR and then boosting the brightness a little bit. And that's about it. And don't get me wrong. I don't want to dictate a creative style to anyone.

I think that that's completely within the realm of what filmmakers can and should decide their images should look like. And the question of, should. should the HDR look different is... It's a big one. It's a valid one because in theory, it shouldn't, right? In theory, you should have the best possible version of your film, the one you want people to see, how you want people to see it. And yes, if it goes down the line to a less good format, you can adapt it to that format. But in general, you want your master hero deliverable to be.

This is the absolute best way I want it to be presented to the audience. You know, we see that with top-level films that, you know, film in IMAX. And the filmmakers are like, you need to go see this in an IMAX film theater to get the whole experience, right? That's fine. There are still 35-millimeter prints going out to other theaters, you know, and there's still, you know, HD or 2K DCPs going out to theaters of those films. but the idea is that the filmmaker decided, okay, my number one, my vision of it is in this format, this visual, and then everything else is going to be derived from that. I think a lot of filmmakers and a lot of, I think a lot of filmmakers right now are setting that default deliverable of where I want my absolute master image to be is kind of an old SDR, But is that is that driven by just their taste and what they like and what they know?

Or is that driven by like, you know, the idea that where the most eyeballs are? Because I think arguably the most eyeballs are still going to be on an SDR image, you know, no matter where it is. You know, back seat, you know, headrest of a plane, you know, somewhere else, you know, that, you know, doesn't have that capability. Yeah. Yeah. But it becomes a chicken and the egg problem. Yeah, yeah. If a filmmaker does want to embrace kind of what you can do.

get with HDR visually that you can't get on a SDR display. It's tough because it does mean sacrificing what a lot of those downstream viewers are going to see. But there's plenty of filmmakers that do that with things like IMAX as well already. And they're kind of considered the forefront, right? They're the top top level. So it's tough. It's a tough question. And I do think there's a lot of momentum in there as well. It is the images they're used to looking at that they're comfortable with that and you know what? That's an artistic decision and I don't want to dictate to not do that. But it is a little bit of a chicken and the egg problem, isn't it? Yeah, I agree. And I think some of this in part has been like, how should I say this? I think if we had started out a couple

years ago, you know, decade ago with the idea that, okay, we are going to totally divorce the HDR component of this from the SDR component of it. We'd be having a slightly different discussion these days. I think a lot of this malevolence towards HDR is derived because of the need, or not the need, but the requirement to package the SDR alongside with the HDR for deliverables to a lot of these OTT platforms without the benefit of doing. a completely bespoke SDR version and a separate HDR version, right? And I think that that, you know, that has,

and we've experienced this, right? You know, you might want to crank the HDR grade to a million, but guess what? Doesn't really translate all that well when you have to go to lower performance to HDR or the SDR. So therefore, we're just going to be a whole lot more conservative about it in general

so we can pretty much get the same thing between it. Now, like companies like Dolby have, I think, started to come around to address this discrepancy and this problem because they've heard from enough people. You know, it'll be interesting to see what how Dolby handles this in particular, because that's where a lot of these, you know, the multifaceted deliverables with the SDR going. It'll be interesting to see how they handle it, you know, in future iterations of, of Dolby Vision. But I think that's that's a large part of it. I think that people have gone cool. This HCR itself might be awesome and great to look at,

but it does, it's inconsequential to me because I can't get that look consistently downstream. You know what I'm saying? And I think they've just decided, well, you know what the path of least resistance is? Just make it HDR-ish. And then we have a much better fighting chance at the SDR being the way that we wanted. You know, and I think that's- And the upside to that is, you know, from a artistic perspective, at least now, even if you do, you know, kind of box yourself into an SDR grade in an HDR container, at least now the playback is going to be a lot more consistent

on devices everywhere, which I think is a huge move forward. But I do think it's going to take a development or a change in thinking, maybe if it's change in technology where we just go, this SDR is one thing and this HDR is a different thing, right? And I think that that would empower filmmakers a little bit to kind of think about them as, Because right now it's a challenge to think about it as how do I create one cohesive thing that works across this broad range of performance capabilities. And that can be challenging. It's certainly challenging, you know, to do it when you're trying to really push things.

And I think that maybe we'll be to that place eventually where it's just going to go, nope, this is HDR-only content movie show, whatever. and we're not even going to worry about the SCR. Are we there yet? Not even close. But I do think that that eventually will, you know, that could change the thinking about it. Let me ask you a slightly different question now. You know, I think when I think about that middle-sized company, middle-to-small-sized company, what has been the primary limitation of them getting into HDR?

I think it's a couple things. Number one, from a business point of view, it's just demand. You know, who's asking for this content? probably not a lot of middle to lower end tier people are. But two, I think there's been some technical hurdles, namely the cost of capable HGR reference monitoring that stopped a lot of people from getting into this, right? I mean, even today here in 2025, I mean, you still have to spend, you know,

to get a traditional reference monitor. You still have to spend, you know, a lot of money, right? And, you know, that's changed a little bit in the past couple years. You know, FSI has come out with their QD line, which is a little more affordable. Companies like ASUS have come out with, they're also offering a QD monitor now that I think is like $1,800, $1,900.

I mean, so we are getting better at that. But then, you know, there's a whole bunch of people that want to do this, so they go get a consumer TV that can do HDR, and then they don't, you know, we've discussed this ad nauseum in other episodes. They're running into technical problems they don't even realize they're having because of the capabilities of the set.

So, I mean, I think that we are also not quite there yet on the acceptance factor or the infiltration, if you will, of capable reference monitoring over a broad swath of, you know, types of companies, too. Yeah, it becomes an issue of, where's a demarcation line of this amount of investment is good enough to really do professional work that I want to stand behind with my client versus I'm kind of experimenting to see the future, but I'm going to go back to what I know as a post-production vendor, which is SDR. Yep.

Yep. I think that's true. And I think, you know, there's been other hurdles, too. I mean, at least initially, you know, if you wanted to get into a Dolby Vision workflow, you know, years ago, it was super expensive. Then they dropped the price. You know, and there's still, I mean, the cool thing is, you know, obviously you can do basic Dolby Vision packaging in a tool like DaVinci Resolve.

There is still a license to get trims. But now the good news is that it's a perpetual license, not a yearly thing. So you can kind of buy it once and, and, be done with it. And it would be interesting to see where they go with that in the future as well. But I mean, those kind of HDR reference monitoring, I think, has been a big hurdle. But it still doesn't fix the issue of demand, right? You're not going to get a lot of people to spend a ton of money on reference monitoring if nobody's asking for it. And so I think, you know, one of the problems or issues with, as far as I'm concerned with uptake of

HDR for that middle to lower end crowd is just how to sell it, right? how to convince people that it's there. And we know you and I offline have this talk frequently about how to get more HDR work and whatever. You know, and I think from our perspective, one of the things that we've been trying to do with varying levels of success is just put it on every single project order or every, every bid, right? And just say, hey, this is an optional thing that we think you could do. And, you know, for a television network, it might be, well, yeah, okay, well, this show is just not. not going to be HDR, so just give us the SDR. But for that independent filmmaker, you know, doing an independent narrative, doing an

independent doc or whatever, I do think that there is logic in, hey, if you haven't already been commissioned by one of these OTT platforms, this gives you a leg up. You have a complete set of deliverables that you can now go, oh, hey, Netflix or hey, Amazon or whatever, we have this HDR version of the film too. And I do think there is some logic that makes those films and those projects more marketable, but it's still, again, it's an additional cost that people look at and go, eh, do I really need to spend this money when nobody's really asking me for this yet? And I don't know.

That's a tough nut. Yeah, and that's kind of the hard question is, you know, as a post-production vendor, do you try to move that ball forward by just including it at, either no cost or low cost, so you can kind of get the clients into there. Or do you, you know, do you integrate it into the bid for everything and just kind of raise prices to compensate? There's a couple different ways that you can kind of attack that. And I don't think there's a perfect answer for that. And part of the challenge here too is that like, okay, fine, you can put, hey, here's some, you know, Dolby Vision grading and packaging or whatever.

and put it on your bid. And people just go, what's that? What do you mean? What does that do for my... And so then you open up this can of worms where it's like you have to demonstrate and show them what it means. You have to have this...

It's not just the cost that's on the PO or the bid. It becomes this whole other thing where for the uninitiated, you're having to show them and try it and have those kind of aesthetic, in creative discussions with them. This is what we could do. do. How do you feel about that? And so it's like it ends up being for the post-production vendor.

It actually ends up being just a crap ton of extra work besides just the the doing it part, the sales, the communication, all of that. So it's like, you know, you think it's bad when people are like, well, what screen should I look at? Have that conversation about, you know, your HDR and, you know, what are they actually seeing on this device versus that device? It can get to be a very technical conversation where very quickly you can get clients to gloss over and just go, yeah, that's not really my thing. You know, so like

I think it's... You know, the other side of that coin though is if you do kind of start out in an HDR world and you say, hey, take your iPad Pro, flip it into reference mode, view this on that, you can use this as a way to bypass

the, but on my grandma's computer at their beach house, it looks kind of purple. notes from the client. Yeah, you know, I think a lot about our audio partners and how they do a lot of things. And it's like, you know, we had a discussion with them a couple weeks ago and it was like,

we start every project in Atmos. You know, and for those of you who are not familiar with it, you know, Atmos is the audio equivalent to Dolby Vision, you know, kind of the wide end of the funnel. And, you know, I'm like, really? You're doing everything in Atmos when nobody's even paying you for it? And it goes, yeah, it just makes all of the downstream deliverables much easier, right? So if somebody needs a 7-1 and a 5-1 and a stereo,

we can just do it all from that one wide end of the funnel. And I just have not yet to date really found that to be true with Adobe Vision workflow in particular. Just because it's just sort of, like there's so much opinion on the matter, right? And there's so much kind of forced feedback about what you're seeing looks so much different than what you have traditionally seen that people just don't want to even get into that ecosystem because they're scared of it still, you know? But I do see that. I will say this. I have on more than one project done the full Dolby Vision workflow, graded it in HDR,

did the SDR trim just as a way to make my SDR. I started doing it as just an experiment. I was like, okay, well, this project's not going to be HDR, but it is really pretty. Why don't I grade it in HDR, then take a little bit of extra time, make a really good SDR trim pass, and just send that to the client as my grade and then get notes on it and then go through the rest of the process and deliver it that way. And for a couple things, it actually worked really well. It was a little bit of an extra time involved. So it's not something I would recommend on a major critical project, but it meant at the end of the day, I had a Dolby Vision master that project ready to go if I ever need it.

And the client had already approved the SDR trim. Yeah. And honestly, that's the way, I mean, I think that's the way I would like to be working. I think the reality of it is, is that it's kind of more times than not, it's the other way around. It's, okay, we got an SCR version. and now let's kind of go up to HDR. You know, with that said, I think there's another thing that's at play here

with just the industry and kind of the attitudes in general, and that is I think a lot of people, and I've talked to people that have this feeling, that they are feeling dictated to, told what to do when it comes to their creative process, right? Now, if you look at it. at it from like a 50,000 point of view, we've always been told what to do. There's always specs and deliverables and QC and all that kind of stuff. But I think there is this gut reaction

to, I am not going to be told how bright to make something. How to, like, there's all these myths, I think, that are so, like, I had somebody the other day told me, well, like, well, doby doby mandates that you have everything at a thousand nits. What? Nobody mandates that, right? But I think that those kind of things have, they snowballed, right? People are being like, I'm going to have this. I hate this because some big massive corporation is telling me how to make my film. And whether that's true or not, I think is somewhat debatable. But I don't think that, in my personal opinion, nobody's saying that.

But I think, yes, you can have those debates. But I think that that has polarized our industry a little bit about this. And Steve's recent seminar, I thought, you know, there were some things I agreed within that seminar. There were some things that I disagreed within that seminar. But what I walked away from the most after watching it was, man, he is identifying a polarization point in the industry about this. That's probably not going to get better anytime soon. Because there are people who have already convinced themselves. This is horrible.

I hate it. Stop telling me what to do. And then there are people who are like, nope, this is cool. I want to try things. And I don't think just like we have in other aspects of our society, I don't think one side is going to convince the other side or vice versa. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

And I would just say, I don't want to dive deep into Steve's presentation because I think everybody that's watching this should take. It's long. It's about two hours. And it is massively worth not just watching, but watching in detail and considering in detail because there are I don't agree with all of his conclusions

but the way he gets to the conclusions even to the conclusions that I don't agree with are so logically laid out that just from a learning perspective and understanding the science of imaging it is worth that presentation is worth its weight in

absolute gold just to watch and understand his reasoning and follow his train of thought because it's so well thought out I mean, clearly. I mean, he's a master explainer. But I do think,

well, we're seeing that kind of duality here, even right now in this podcast, because earlier I'm like, yeah, why don't people want to go past SDR, luminance of saturation? And then the next sentence I said was,

yeah, but I don't want to tell the artists how to do it. So I should be saying, do whatever you want, but I'm also saying at the same time, I want to see this kind of style and and more, you know, more HDR-ish images out in the world. So I'm kind of conflicting with myself right now.

It's complicated simply because, I mean, I do agree with the side of the arguments about the emotional and like kind of intrinsic feel, feel differences. Like that's, you can't get around that, right? Like when you're, you know, for a hundred and something years, you know, used to content that is what we're used to, everything is going to feel differently. But what I'm, what I'm pushing back on is just that like that doesn't make it wrong. It just makes it different. I remember when I lived in Australia, right? Like, you know, first time I ever, you know, when I landed in the country and got in a cab and the, you know, the driver's on the other side of the car and we're driving on the other side of the road, right? and I remember going, you know, oh, we're driving on the wrong side of the road,

and the cab driver just looked back and just said, no, it's just the other side of the road or the different side of the road, you know? And it's just like, it feels to me that's kind of like an analogous thing to some of this HTR argument. It's like, yeah, I can totally get with how people think this is the wrong side of the road, but in reality, it's just different in any difference, any challenge to establish workflow, doctrine, whatever it may be, always has pushback, always has a feeling of wrongness to it, always, you know, and I just think that, I just think that we're not developed and not,

we're still so early on in the infancy of this where it just really hasn't developed. And I also, I mean, I don't know, tell me how you feel about this. I don't think that the technology has also fully developed yet on a lot of levels, right? I mean, that's even, that's even a base, like, you're a big evangelist for the, the advantages of PQ as an absolute kind of, you know, hey, every, you know, absolute relationship between light output and, and that kind of stuff. I mean, who's to say that PQ can't adapt and change over the next decade or two to, you know, fix some of the technical problems? We've seen that with, you know, color management systems like ACEs, which continues to adapt. Like, there's nothing to say that, you know, PQ, HLG, and I, kind of stuff can't continue to adapt to address some of the potential limitations of it right now. Yeah, and we've seen that already, and I think we definitely need more of it. You know, one of the big problems with PQ is it can't map up, which for some viewing environments just doesn't work. Dolby started to address that with like their Dolby Vision IQ where it has like a light sensor on the display and it kind of adapts to the viewing environment a little bit better.

We're also seeing that, you know, kind of back to the beginning of this discussion, the mobile devices have kind of led to charge on that because if you look at HDR content on your phone, you can crank the brightness up, you can crank the brightness down. You're managing your own display brightness on a mobile device drastically more often than you are on a television or in a reference environment. And I don't think the standards were initially designed with that in mind. So as this evolves, the ability to handle different viewing environments, I think, is going to improve, I hope. But also, we can kind of, like, do we need to go up? Do we need to be able to encode up to 10,000 nits? Maybe looking back, that's not necessary. And it would be a more efficient use of data to be able to scale the PQ curve, for example, to make better use of code value precision, things like that.

you know, you're right. These things are, yes, they're standardized and standards do evolve. And I would like to, I think to get us to this point where like everything is HDR and we're in happy, wonderful imaginary land. Like we kind of said, we aren't yet. I think the standards do need to evolve a little bit. The technology does need to evolve a little bit with kind of what we've learned over the past decade of implementing this kind of work. Yeah, I mean, so to kind of sum that up, I don't think the pushback from the non-HCR crowd is invalid at all. I think there's a lot of validity to the things that they say. But I also think that the things that the HDR proponents are trying to do are also perfectly valid. And it just feels that we have, again, just like a lot of things in our society, we've made this into a polarizing thing when I just don't think it really needs to be. I think that like we can we can we can do both. We can push the technical and performance, you know, abilities of what we're doing now with an eye towards legacy and aesthetic

and all of all of that kind of stuff. I don't think it really has to be an if or then conversation. And again, I think a lot of this, a lot of this is driven by the fact that early on and still to the day, it is challenging to do everything in one all-inclusive packaging, right? You know, if Netflix said tomorrow, hey, guys, every production can deliver a bespoke SDR and an HDR package, and we're not going to derive the SDR out of that HDR package at all, it would make a lot of people really happy, right?

Because then they wouldn't have to be like, oh, now we have to, you know, we have to, you know, down, you know, dumb down our HDR to make the SDR look good. So I think that part of it, you know, with all of the work that people are doing on the technical side and the creative side is, is getting there. But last thing I want to say about on this, on this topic for, you know, small companies like us is I would just say, don't give up on it either. I just think that, you know, people, you know, a decade ago who were like, ah, man, I'm not getting into 3D.

I think, like, they were probably right about that, right? Like, you know, even though it's making a little bit of a comeback with headsets and all that kind of stuff, I still think it's proven itself to be a little bit of a niche thing. I just don't think with HDR we are the snowball effect over the past decade is so massive with so many billions, right, involved that nobody's walking away from this yet, you know? And so I think that like, you got to be in it on some level, knowledgeable. about it or whatever and this stuff about the language of it and the creative aspect i think that will get worked out and also i just want to say one more thing about the creative side because it just dawned to me and i know that you'll you'll love this reference because he's one of your favorite colorists right go do yourself a favor and watch some stylized hdierr shows from uh ean at

light iron in vaudevac at light iron right what was the uh what was the um the the the show that he did that I know Tales from the Loop was one of my favorite on Amazon that he did. What was the one that you really liked? Glow. Oh, yeah, glow. That's what it was. And so like, I still think that is the benchmark for a incredible looking HDR grade that had a throwback to the SCR.

It had a throwback look, but it just worked in its own way. It wasn't a, it was a visual. I need to go back and rewatch it again with this conversation. in mind, but I think a lot of his work and that kind of work in that vein to incorporate a lot of the aesthetic choices that were made in the film in SDR world and try to update those a little bit into the HDR world. I felt the same way about the Amazon series he did Tales from the Loop. I just, I was just like, this is gorgeous, like absolutely gorgeous. And I felt the same way about our buddy Dan Moran and his grade on adolescence, which is like the biggest show

and the biggest thing in the world right now on Netflix. Again, you know, and Dan has probably one of the sharpest, most creative filmic eyes that I know. It's incredible to see when people put in the effort. And I think that's part of it. I think it's like giving the artist's space and time to sort of figure this out a little bit. And I think that's part of the dictating thing too. It's like, oh yeah, you've done all this work. Now you need to do an HDR version and everybody scrambles and just goes, ah, whatever. But when you allow them the space to go, to think about it and go, all right, how can we get our look and feel into this place?

Really magical things happen. So I would encourage everybody to go check out some of that more modern stuff, Ian's work, Dan's work. because it's like, to me, it's like the best of both worlds. It really is giving a little bit of that, you know, hat tip to the traditional aesthetic, but updating it for an HDR world. I mean, listen, man, I know that if we could, you know, be in a situation where, you know, we hit that mark,

a lot of people's ideas about HDR would probably change, right? And I think, again, for me, it's just that those people and the teams involved in those projects and many projects like them were given the time, the effort, the headspace to think about how can we get this into an HDR-looking thing that still works for everybody. And I think to, you know, the detractors point,

yeah, there's plenty of bad HDR. There's plenty of bad HDR. There's plenty of bad SDR. Right. Don't let the bad HDR be, you know, the definitive statement on the matter because I think if you do a little digging, you will find some good HDR.

And, you know, this is, We'll have to revisit this in a couple of years because I think that, you know, again, that's, you know, it's still an ongoing, developing set of things. And now that we have, you know, a good solid decade under our belts, I, for one, am excited where the next decade goes on all levels. Monitors, mobile devices, the standard bodies with, you know, things like PQ and HLG, like color spaces, all of that kind of stuff. I think we are in, yeah, okay, we've learned a lot. We know it works now. We know it doesn't work. And we've talked about some of these things in other episodes, right?

Like when Brahm was on us, you know, on with us talking about monitors and, you know, is going on about rec 2020. Like, I'm like, oh, yeah, that doesn't make sense that it was a little ass backwards to begin with, right? So, you know, I think as an industry we are learning. It just, you know, it just might not be at the speed, the impact somebody's project right the second. But I do think it's going to be going to get better. Agreed. All right, everybody.

Well, hey, thanks for checking out another episode of the show. Just as a reminder, you can follow us on Instagram and on Facebook. The show is also available on YouTube, and on all those places, just search for the Offset Podcast. You can always head over to Offsetpodcast.com to find episodes as well. And over there, too, we sometimes put additional show notes, links, you know, transcript, that kind of stuff as well. Thanks as always to our sponsor, Flanders Scientific. And to you guys, our audience who keep watching these shows and, you know, making us want to do them. So we appreciate that as well.

Until next time, I'm Robbie Carmen. And I'm Joey Deanna. Thanks for listening.