The Netflix “HDR” Scam

Analysis of “HDR” Netflix Shows

At a two-day Mini LED TV workshop hosted by TCL in Warsaw, the manufacturer put together a demonstration illustrating how Netflix shows aren’t taking advantage of the capabilities of HDR. Vincent Teoh reports:

“This is a very cool demonstration by TCL about how some Netflix shows are graded so conservatively. They have designed a live video analyzer that can tell you the luminance and also the color gamut of the content that is displayed on screen. So, if I play season 1 episode 1 of The Crown, we will show you the peak brightness level and also the color gamut that this very popular TV show on Netflix has been graded to. You can see that the Netflix Original series is running at probably around […] so currently the Buckingham Palace is running at around 200 nits but otherwise the frame average luminance level is just slightly above one nit even though there are some bright lights on the screen; and even the lights don’t even exceed 100 nits. And this scene here looks fairly okay, but again, it’s still under say even 30 nits or 50 nits and the frame average level – we have some bright windows there – that is still graded to only 100 nits, which is basically the peak white target for SDR. Certainly it doesn’t give you that sort of HDR impact that many of you are looking for. And if you pay attention to the color gamut, the majority of it is within Rec. 709. Obviously, this is a period drama, it is very conservatively graded, but still I think what TCL is trying to say is that a lot of the Netflix shows are graded so conservatively that it doesn’t actually showcase the power and the peak brightness capabilities and the wide color gamut capabilities of their TCL Mini LED TV. This is not to say that all Netflix shows are graded so conservatively. TCL also showed us in this brighter scene, you can see that some brighter elements go all the way up to 1,000 nits and the frame average luminance level or FALL is somewhere close to 100 nits, which will give you
that sort of impact that some of you will be looking for from a nice piece of aggressively graded HDR content. I certainly hope that more shows will be graded in a more beautiful manner, a less conservative manner, so that we can take advantage of the luminance and also wide color gamut capabilities of these new TVs, including the TCL 2025 series.”