Does anyone have any good results trying to watch HDR movies on Windows 10?
I have an HDR monitor, and I’ve had games successfully put the monitor into HDR mode (playing Hitman).
However, I’ve been unable to properly play a movie in fullscreen in HDR mode. I’m not sure if I’m using the wrong player, or if there is some other issue.
Windows 10’s native HDR support is nearly unusable because it has to be manually toggled on in display settings and applies constantly rather than, e.g., only activating when applications are outputting HDR, meaning everything that isn’t HDR is super bright and washed out, and that’s most things. There isn’t even a convenient toggle as far as I know. It sounds like you have not been using that. Games like Hitman that are switching HDR on by themselves are bypassing Windows’ solution and manually forcing it, which is how everything should be doing it because of the aforementioned terrible, but most things - including stuff like the Netflix app - doesn’t.
It sounds like you haven’t been doing that, so that’s probably your first issue. Second thing is that there’s not much that actually supports HDR content on PC. There are a number of games that won’t realize you have HDR unless you’ve toggled it on in Windows, but the only thing I know for sure that serves HDR is Netflix in Edge or the Windows 10 Netflix app, and while I believe you can also get it on 4K Blurays, I have been unable to convince the DRM to work on my PC - I think I have slightly too old a chipset or something? (I do have a 4K drive, it’s the DRM that’s an issue.) You definitely won’t get it on any streaming service other than Netflix.
Windows 11 at least has a keyboard shortcut to toggle it, unsure if that got ported to any 10 patches or not. It’s Win-Alt-B.
It was not. Windows 11 having improved HDR handling is like, the one reason I would consider switching.
I hear this a lot and it concerned me before getting a new TV and upgrading my PC (my primary gaming platform) but I’ve never had any issues with it. I toggle it in Windows and it automatically turns on when it’s enabled in games that support HDR (like Elden Ring and Doom Eternal). The worst thing is that I can’t take HDR screenshots without them looking washed out and grey in SD (like when I view them in Windows), which is a bummer.
All that said, I don’t watch movies through my PC because of the aforementioned DRM issues with blu-rays (and I’m not paying for AnyDVD). It was always an unexpected headache, not to mention surround sound was patchy through apps and browsers last time I tried too…
I’m afraid I can’t help with your problem though Blips.
I have AnyDVD and it doesn’t help with playing 4K Blurays. I mean, it probably does some stuff (I mostly have it to ignore region coding and be able to skip to menus, which I’ve been able to do on anything I can actually play), but there’s only like one application that supports playing 4K discs (PowerDVD) and it has its own copyright protection bullshit that AnyDVD doesn’t bypass.
I’ve had HDR enabled on my display since I got it and it auto-switches to HDR when it detects HDR content. Windows 11. Upgrade for free, no reason not to.
Oh well that’s shit. Yeah I recall trying PowerDVD and that played (non-4K) stuff okay but there was some other problem I had with that solution that I can’t remember now. Either way, I was actually dumbfounded by how much of a pain in the arse watching movies was on a PC (legally and at optimal quality).
Apart from Microsoft being really bad at this “making operating systems” thing, you mean. Nah, I’ll give it another 5 years in the oven to transition to merely being a piece of shit, first.
Uh, okay. I’ve been using it for about a year now and it’s been 100% fine. I don’t even really notice/think about the OS, I guess, though I appreciated HDR being automated.
Doesn’t matter unless you have a HDR-capable display anyway which you almost certainly don’t. HDR400 is garbage, and anything without hundreds of dimming zones (ie, mini-LED or OLED) isn’t capable of meaningful HDR.
I mean, Hitman 2 looks fucking amazing in HDR on my monitor, which is not mini/OLED. Is that “meaningful HDR”? what the fuck do I care?
I have never not hated a Windows, and any time (including 10) I have used them anywhere near launch they’ve been massively worse. In fact, it’s only been a year or two since 10 stabilized to a point where it wasn’t pulling shit like routinely assigning Microsoft programs I don’t use and don’t want as my defaults every time an update hit, uninstalling the Microsoft Store (you’re not even allowed to do that!) in a way that broke a bunch of programs, installing freemium games I didn’t want without my permission, or turning on ads in the middle of my UI without asking me. I guarantee 11 isn’t going to break that trend, and while auto-HDR is nice, there’s so little HDR support anyway it’s nowhere near enough of an incentive for me to deal with the other “features” they’ve advertised that I don’t want until they force my hand.
I don’t know the model of your monitor, but if it’s certified HDR400 you aren’t really looking at HDR.
I disagree… Mine is HDR 400, but actually gets around 600 nits and it totally looks better with it on. I also have a TV that does like 1000 nits which obviously looks even better, but it’s not some gigantic leap. Even if you can’t get super crazy bright highlights the colors will pop a lot more.
The best HDR implementation is the one in front of you. Unless you are comparing them side by side, it’s fine either way.
I didn’t say it wouldn’t look better, just that it wasn’t real HDR. You’re getting a substantially brighter display, but HDR isn’t just about brightness, it’s about the contrast between dark and bright areas, that is what high dynamic range means, and you need tons of local dimming zones to get that contrast. Or OLED.
The best HDR is always going to be on OLED for sure - though I was really pleased with how it (God of War) looked on my Ultrawide display I picked up earlier in the year. I think it’s HDR600 though.
HDR600 is much more likely to offer real HDR, yeah.
Lots of people see high brightness (and 600 nits on a monitor that tops-out at 400 in SDR is noticeably brighter) and think that’s all HDR is. It’s a pretty common misconception.
As somebody with Win 11 and an HDR monitor – it’s almost unusable if HDR is on outside of specific games that support it. I’ve tried 100 ways to tweak it but the washed out colors, problematic screenshots, etc. just make it a terrible experience. That said, it looks great when I’m playing an HDR-enabled game.
So, no improvement in Win11 at all. Sounds about right.