Ridiculous Dolby Gaming Ad

Dolby released an ad on YouTube showing ‘consumers’ going wild over the Dolby Atmos audio and picture quality of Dolby Vision gaming. One of the participants exclaims, “I think the depth and color of the blacks are very well represented.” Only they’re all sitting in an impossibly brightly lit room, the worst possible scenario for appreciating HDR, least of all any detail in the shadows. In their most recent technical update webinar, Dolby acknowledged for the very first time what the rest of us have known for years, which is that most colorists dislike HDR. Samuel Bilodeau, Product Manager Imaging Content Creation Solutions, Dolby, then proceeded to demonstrate how to preserve the putrid SDR look in an HDR workflow. Now Dolby appears to be acknowledging that most consumers watch TV in brightly lit rooms. Dolby Vision content is mastered in a dim room with 5 nits (or less) surround illumination.

Asus explains why HDR gaming in a brightly lit room isn’t such a brilliant idea:

In the SDR days, setting up a gaming display was simple. You took it out of the box, you put it on your desk, and you plugged it in. If you were worried about color fidelity, you might have calibrated it and set the brightness to a comfortable level. For the most part, though, a new monitor was mostly fire and forget.

HDR monitors are different. To get the most out of your display, you need to be mindful of ambient light sources and light levels in your gaming space. The artists that created your HDR content carefully controlled the ambient light levels in their studios or grading suites, and you need to employ the same care when you play back their work if you can. 

If that argument sounds a little too Hollywood highfalutin, recall that you may have just spent well over a grand on a new monitor. You don’t want to throw away a bit of its performance potential to poor viewing conditions. 

Here’s the problem: the matte coatings used on computer monitors can still show reflections from ambient light sources in the form of bright, diffuse blobs. These reflections can demolish a display’s specified contrast ratio, especially if they’re large and cover the entire screen. Since HDR relies on extreme contrast for part of its magic, reflections simply can’t be ignored.

Having a high ambient light level in a room naturally causes your pupils to dilate, as well, lessening the optical impact of extreme highlights on an HDR display when they do pop up. If you love (or want to love) the slight urge to squint that bright HDR highlights induce, having any lights on will diminish that physiological response. 

To minimize the problems that ambient light can cause for an enjoyable HDR experience, it’s worth making your space as dark as possible. The easiest way to do this is to game at night and turn out any lights in the room where you have your PC. Yes, this means turning off any overhead fixtures or floor lamps that could cause reflections on a display. Yes, this will turn your space into a bit of a cave. Trust me, it’s worth it. 

You may also find it helpful to shut off—or at least dim—any RGB LED light sources or peripherals in your setup, since those diodes can pump surprising amounts of light into a space. Presuming you built your system with Aura Sync components, shutting off the lights is as simple as opening the Aura utility and toggling one software switch.

If you can’t or don’t want to game at night, you should consider purchasing a set of blackout curtains tailored to the windows in your game room. Presuming that respectable interior design isn’t a priority for your space, you can also reduce ambient light levels by hanging a few large sheets of thick paper over offending windows with good old tape. 

Whatever approach you choose, taking a few minutes to control the light in your room will pay off with a better experience every time you sit down for another session with your favorite HDR title.