A popular YouTuber, discussing Sony’s remarkable new 4,000-nit miniLED TV, makes the following outlandish claims:
1. Sony says that OLED isn’t good enough
2. Sony’s 4,000-nit miniLED TV has completely destroyed Korea’s OLED TV industry
3. Sony Pictures could dictate that colorists grade peak highlights to 4,000 nits
4. Netflix and Amazon could charge an extra 5 dollars for streaming 4,000-nit content
5. Colorists could master to 4,000 nits without a 4,000-nit monitor
6. Highlights of older SDR and HDR shows could be raised to 4,000 nits
7. 4,000 nits is twice as bright as 2,000 nits
We’re only going to address numbers 3, 5, 6 and 7.
Sony Pictures could dictate that colorists grade peak highlights to 4,000 nits
There has never been a push for or a requirement by any of the major Hollywood studios or leading streaming content providers that HDR shows hit a peak luminance of 1,000 nits. Where the Crawdads Sing and Glass Onion were little different from an SDR grade, to name just two examples of the many Dolby Vision movies and series streamed on Netflix that reject HDR highlights altogether.
“It is also worth highlighting that a critical feature of the HDR system developed by DCI is one of creative expression. An HDR DCP need not exercise the entire range of brightness offered by the HDR specification. Despite the peak luminance that an HDR system is capable of, the brightness or darkness of each shot of a movie is always up to the filmmaker. It is not up to the HDR projector or display, which simply provides the full range of capabilities. DCI seeks to ensure that the headroom required to reproduce a filmmaker’s creative vision exists, whether that be the darkness of a cave, a candle, a car’s headlights, a meteor, or sunlight spilling through a window.” – DCI
The DCI is a consortium of major motion picture studios comprising Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios, The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros.
Colorists could master to 4,000 nits without a 4,000-nit monitor
The target luminance should not exceed the capabilities of the reference display, which is why colorists create 4,000-nit masters on a Dolby Pulsar or Sony BVM-HX3110 reference mastering monitor.
Highlights of older SDR and HDR shows could be raised to 4,000 nits
Not only would arbitrarily increasing the brightness of specular highlights to 4,000 nits destroy creative intent, it would be horribly distracting. “[W]hen highlights reach too high a contrast compared to the rest of the image, they may often feel disjointed and unnatural relative to the rest of the scene. Furthermore, if the highlights are not on the director’s object of focus in the scene, they can be distracting to the viewer instead of causing more immersion.” (Predicting HDR Cinema Requirements From HDR Home Master Statistics)
Some in the comments section of the video even remarked that filmmakers would be all too happy to take advantage of 4,000-nit specular highlights, whereas most even shy away from 1,000 nits!
4,000 nits is twice as bright as 2,000 nits
“[D]ue to the logarithmic response of the human eye to changes in light levels, the present day SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) Rec709 ‘standard’ of 100 nits is actually around 50% of PQ based HDR’s 10,000 nits peak level.” 1,000 nits is around 75% or thereabouts. So pereceptually, doubling luminance does not mean it will be perceived as being twice as bright. (What Is HDR?, Steve Shaw)
The Daejeon Chronicles 
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