Canary and 4K HDR

[FrgMstr]

Canary is Google's bleeding-edge Chrome browser where they test new features. We thought you might want to be able to view this 4K HDR in Chrome without the greyed and washed out colors. You can test it with the video below. Make sure you enable HDR in the Display Settings first so that the HDR tage shows in the Youtube video as a playback option. Of course you will likely want to have an HDR 4K display as well. Thanks cageymaru.

Check out the video if you system is up to it.

Not for the faint of heart - Canary is designed for developers and early adopters, and can be prone to breakage.

 

[Chris_B]

4k check


hdr nope

 

[Kdawg]

my fakedr looks fine

 

[burton14e7]

Is this still using html 5 so it doesn't use gpu processing?

 

[Dr. Righteous]

4K HDTVs have really come down in price are pretty attractive to a cheap-skate like me. But the question I have is where is the CONTENT?
I don't really see 4K streaming reliably in many places.

 

[BSmith]

Yep. I am strictly a streamer and 4K content (well, content not so overly compressed and artifact laden) is a bust.
4K for a computer monitor just seems too much when the 32" 2K (2560x1440) monitor is overwhelming me in size as it is.

I just do not see the "bang for the buck" in 4K monitors.

 

[Ski]

I'm going to have to be the contrarian here and just say that while HDR is beautiful to look at, the colors are just over-saturated. To a layman gamer they won't care or understand, but to a professional artist, photographer, graphic designer, it takes away from the realism by making it resemble more of a Photoshopped video than next level technology. Don't misunderstand me guys, I know how awesome it is in games, and maybe even sports, but outside of that, everything else look cartoony and fake. With that said, the nits aspect is something I adore and I look forward to seeing that part of HDR develop further down the pipeline

 

[Wiffle]

High Dynamic Range? Is that where you smoke a bowl of the devils lettuce and binge game/tv and trip out on how amazing the colors and lines are?

If that's the case, then bring on the HDR!

Joking aside, I never really cared for all the special filters in games, I usually turn them off cause my eyes do enough refocusing that HDR and other filters bother me. HD bloom is simply taking off my glasses...

 

[Domingo]

Even with everything HDR-enabled, you're still going to need a separate HDR-focused color configuration on most TV's. Otherwise they're going to looked washed out and off. It looks worse than just not having HDR at all.
It's been a while since I've tried it, but the best way to watch YouTube HDR videos in the past was to tell it to cast it over to your TV. On my Samsung it just opens whatever video you were watching on your PC in the TV's native YouTube app. I have it pre-configured for HDR color and it bypasses Microsoft's oddball Windows HDR "support," too.

As far as how good HDR actually is, I'm not 100% sold on it. The demo videos on most TV's aren't even actually running in HDR mode. They're just simulating the effect. You can download many of them and see it for yourself.

 

[Burticus]

Have to say that looked pretty damned impressive even on 1440p, no hdr, no 4k

 

[another-user]

nice to see that they finally got hdr working in chrome.

now if MS or Nvidia would just unfuck the standard desktop display when HDR mode is enabled.

though it doesnt help that 4:2:2 makes text look terrible anyways.

 

[Brahmzy]

Holy fail in this thread.

 

[the901]

I'm still waiting for YouTube with surround sound.

 

[AlphaAtlas]

I'm going to have to be the contrarian here and just say that while HDR is beautiful to look at, the colors are just over-saturated. To a layman gamer they won't care or understand, but to a professional artist, photographer, graphic designer, it takes away from the realism by making it resemble more of a Photoshopped video than next level technology. Don't misunderstand me guys, I know how awesome it is in games, and maybe even sports, but outside of that, everything else look cartoony and fake. With that said, the nits aspect is something I adore and I look forward to seeing that part of HDR develop further down the pipeline

Well most professionals recognize and stare at sRGB as their living, so of course it's going to look over-saturated to their eyes.

That being said, HDR calibration is indeed a mess ATM. Most HDR displays probably are over-saturated like crazy, but they aren't supposed to look like that.

I'm still waiting for YouTube with surround sound.

YouTube can do surround sound. It can even do binaural audio (for VR).

It's not a Dolby or DTS format though. If someone does upload it that way (which is rare), AFAIK it's usually multichannel Opus on the webm videos, which isn't going to pass over an optical out to a reciever if that's what you're trying to do. It should work over HDMI though.

 

[RogueTadhg]

Meh. I seen HDR in person compared to normal.

 

[aldamon]

I'm still waiting for YouTube with surround sound.

Make that everything (Amazon, Netflix, etc.) with surround sound please.

 

[AlphaAtlas]

Make that everything (Amazon, Netflix, etc.) with surround sound please.

Netflix and Amazon also stream surround sound.

You mean a surround system for yourself? If you have some decent headphones and Windows 10, Dolby Atmos can take a surround feed from Netflix/Amazon, and it sounds pretty good. It costs $10 IIRC.

 

[Domingo]

Make that everything (Amazon, Netflix, etc.) with surround sound please.

Netflix has had surround for a while via DD+. There aren't many, but a few newer movies/shows use a version of Atmos, too. That works across all platforms as far as I can tell.
Amazon doesn't support 5.1 on the PC for some reason, but it does on game consoles and native TV apps (via ARC).

 

[Ur_Mom]

I'm going to have to be the contrarian here and just say that while HDR is beautiful to look at, the colors are just over-saturated. To a layman gamer they won't care or understand, but to a professional artist, photographer, graphic designer, it takes away from the realism by making it resemble more of a Photoshopped video than next level technology. Don't misunderstand me guys, I know how awesome it is in games, and maybe even sports, but outside of that, everything else look cartoony and fake. With that said, the nits aspect is something I adore and I look forward to seeing that part of HDR develop further down the pipeline

I wonder about that. I'm not a professional, but I'm looking at some of the TV's at Best Buy (was out shopping with the girls, so my kids and I hit Best Buy to look around). The OLED's with HDR looked pretty amazing. But, some things did look oversaturated and the color contrast was way off. It looked too unrealistic at times. Other times, it looked excellent. Some nature shots, darker images, etc. looked really good.

I like it, but I'd try and tone it down with some media. I would really like to try it on the travel channel others. When I first went to 1080p, that's what I watched for a while. The tropical beaches, forests, jungles, etc. were the perfect thing to show it off. That's where I'd want to judge it.

I want 4K HDR on the desktop, but it'd be for the games not so much movies.

 

[Domingo]

Right now the games that use it primarily only use it for bright light sources (the sun, lasers, fire/explosions, etc.) and you wouldn't really notice they're using HDR 80% of the time.
For movies, it's even less noticeable at the moment. Those demos at the store are nearly always totally unrepresentative of real content. They're always 4K in slow motion with no film grain, boatloads of light effects, super rich colors, and deep blacks that head into crush territory. They're also often not using actual HDR mode (which needs a separate calibration) but are just super vivid normal videos.

Maybe at some point it'll be a bigger deal when it doesn't require so many hoops to jump through. Basically when it just works regardless of content and isn't a separate "mode" the requires support from every medium. Right now it's more of a neat gimmick than a real feature.

 

[Brahmzy]

HDR is far from a gimmick. I have 80+ UHD / HDR discs ripped to NAS and play them on a high-end 75" via W10 HTPC w/MadVR. It sounds like a lot of you are new to the 4K/HDR thing.

I would HIGHLY encourage you to find somebody with a nice, proper HT and watch some real HDR content. There's tons of it out there (300+ UHD discs and growing fast, tons of Netflix content etc.)

HDR might not be ready for gaming, but it's BEEN ready for home theater and it's freakin' huge. Massive upgrade when done correctly.

 

[BSmith]

HDR is far from a gimmick. I have 80+ UHD / HDR discs ripped to NAS and play them on a high-end 75" via W10 HTPC w/MadVR. It sounds like a lot of you are new to the 4K/HDR thing.

I would HIGHLY encourage you to find somebody with a nice, proper HT and watch some real HDR content. There's tons of it out there (300+ UHD discs and growing fast, tons of Netflix content etc.)

HDR might not be ready for gaming, but it's BEEN ready for home theater and it's freakin' huge. Massive upgrade when done correctly.

I think a lot of people are being put off due to the default settings used in the retail environment (you are not going to get the best picture when the color temperature is over 9000K).

That said, I can live without HDR or with it set to minimums. It is still very dependent on the content and tends to be hit or miss.

 

[aldamon]

Netflix has had surround for a while via DD+. There aren't many, but a few newer movies/shows use a version of Atmos, too. That works across all platforms as far as I can tell.
Amazon doesn't support 5.1 on the PC for some reason, but it does on game consoles and native TV apps (via ARC).

Let me rephrase this. This thread is about Chrome and AFAIK it only supports stereo no matter what you're viewing. That's what prompted my reply.

 

[aldamon]

Netflix and Amazon also stream surround sound.

You mean a surround system for yourself? If you have some decent headphones and Windows 10, Dolby Atmos can take a surround feed from Netflix/Amazon, and it sounds pretty good. It costs $10 IIRC.

Thank you. I'll look into this Win10 addon once my new Atmos receiver arrives.

EDIT: Are you sure about this? Everything I've found still says Chrome only supports stereo sound.

 

[AlphaAtlas]

Thank you. I'll look into this Win10 addon once my new Atmos receiver arrives.

EDIT: Are you sure about this? Everything I've found still says Chrome only supports stereo sound.

I know the W10 Netflix app supports 5.1.

I think I was wrong about Amazon though. They don't have an official Windows streaming app yet, and you may be right about browser support.

A Roku or something might be worth investing in.