What is the point of hDR?

Don't forget about HDR bluerays. Vimeo, Youtube, Netflix, and Amazon Video do support HDR though the content may be limited as mentioned. Amazon and Netflix are requiring HDR for any new masters so anything you see going forward should be HDR.

4) isn't accurate, there is at least one HDR monitor (Samsung I believe) that doesn't support REC2020 but does support DCI-P3 which is in between REC2020 and REC709 in terms of the gamut supported. Rec2020 is not required for HDR today, but it is the future target once we can manufacture panels that actually support %100 of the gamut scope.

There are at least 4 HDR standards (Dolby Vision, HDR10, Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG), and HDR+). All of them are targetting anywhere from 300-1000nits of brightness (well short of the 10,000 they seek to target in the future) and nobody can hit %100 coverage of REC2020 right now. Over the next few years we'll strive to hit those targets, so as such we know that HDR content created today won't match the standards in a few years, however I'm confident there will be backwards compatibility support of the most successful standards (I'm banking on HDR10). Some televisions support DV, HDR10, and HLG so you can seek wider compatibility too.

As a content creator I can start making HDR videos now and can only very recently actually watch them on a computer in HDR. Complaining about HDR on the PC platform is still premature as its hardly gotten off the ground.

What is the point of HDR?

1) Brightness levels beyond the ~100 nits of displays we've seen for the last 20-30 years. 250-500 is about what most manufacturers are hitting currently, 10,000 is the eventual goal.

2) Billions of colors instead of millions of colors. I've been using PCs since the early 80's and things like color banding and dithering have been an ugly eyesore we haven't been able to ditch. While artists can enjoy 10-bit+ displays no video content providers have been trying to push past 8-bit color until recently.

Its early in the adoption of a new standard, but its a new standard I'm very excited for and eager to see it succeed. Its my plan to pick one of these HDR monitors up in the next few months as I already have a camera that can capture multiple HDR video formats. Even if hardly anybody sees them today I'm banking that 10-bit 4k HDR content created today is more futureproofed than SDR content.

I have a much much more optimistic view of this new technology than the OP. Let me know if anyone has questions.

/r/Monitors Thread