this is where i got confused with HDR. in reality, the world is dull most of the time. at least seen from my eyes...
those amazing nature pictures are never like that when i go there by myself. reality is less vibrant, less saturated.
HDR Pacific Rim do look better than SDR tho, when seen on my shitty LG HDR 4K TV. For FF XV, HDR mode just make the picture too cartoony.
That's because you also need contrast ratio in conjunction with HDR. Heck, I would even go as far as to say contrast ratio is even more important than dynamic range (HDR) in real life rendition. My Panasonic plasma TV may be SDR only, but its picture looks still closer to real life than any HDR TVs I've seen and that includes the Sony Z9D. Usually, dynamic range and contrast ratio goes hand to hand, but not always. There are two ways to measure contrast ratio : sequential and simultaneous.
1) Sequential contrast ratio is obtained by dividing the brightest luminance the display can attain at one time, with the darkest luminance the display can attain at one time. In this scenario, the brightest white and the darkest black don't have to be together on the screen at the same time. Dynamic range can also operate sequentially, so in this scenario, both contrast ratio and dynamic range are interchangable.
2) Simultaneous contrast ratio is obtained by dividing the brightest luminance with the darkest luminance at the same time. Another name for simultaneous contrast contrast ratio is ANSI contrast ratio because when measuring simulataneous contrast ratio, you put out ANSI checkerboard pattern (alternating black and white) with varying APL, but the correct way to measure it is with 50% APL. (50% of area is covered with full white, 50% area covered with complete black)
I'll use an audio analogy to explain. Dynamic range is also very, very important for audio. Sequential contrast ratio would be like Haydn Symphony No.94 'Surprise' or any pop ballads when they start off being quiet than suddenly explodes. Simultaneous contrast ratio would be playing quiet flute and loud gong at the same time. A very good pair of speakers will have no problem rendering the two instruments accurately at the same time.
CRTs are truly weird beasts. Their sequential contrast ratio can get easily over 8000:1 yet their ANSI contrast ratio is only 50~100:1. To make up for their ANSI contrast ratio deficiency, CRTs are extremely fast in sequential movements so we can see jumps in luminance in very smooth, very animated manner. This is why we still fondly remember CRTs despite their shortcomings.
Simulatenous contrast ratio is further divided into two methods: a) native and b) zone assisted
a) Native : Measured ANSI contrast ratio at pixel level
b) Zone assisted : Measured ANSI contrast ratio at two divided zones
Plasmas and OLEDs are (a) types, CRTs and Full Array Local Dimming (FALD) LCDs are (b) types. It's very important to distinguish between the two.
Most of today's displays mix Red, Green, and Blue to create billions of colors. That's why it's desirable to output pure, unmolested colors. But such is not possible with a display with poor black level. Suppose you want to output the most pure blue color. Then, unwanted white light enters into such blue colored pixel. What would happen with that blue colored pixel? It gets diluted to be lighter. Purity and saturation lost. And what determies the amount of said unwanted white light? The display's minimum black level, AKA black level. This is why when it comes to display, it's important to remember black as not just another color, but as an absence of light. Thinking as former will make a lot of people understand good black level only useful for black and shadow detail. No, it's important in every colors, including bright daylight scenes. Think of banana, blueberry, and strawberry juice and what would happen to their colors if some milk is added. Same thing. It gets diluted and it will get diluted the more when more milk is added. So think of black level as not black, but as an white dilution, as ironic as it might sound at first. The lower the black level, the lower the white dilution.
Zone assisted contrast ratio, on the other hand, is not defined at the pixel level. It requires two physical pixels or areas put together adjacently. And it doesn't care whether those two adjacent areas come from same panel or two different micro panels. To understand why FALDs are used on LCDs, one needs first understand the black level stability of displays. For OLED displays, black level luminance output at given pixel level do not change at all with regards to any luminance changes in other pixels. The LCDs, being a transmissive displays, do change. For this reason, Samsung/Sony S-LCD's 0.03 cd/m2 black level figure is actually not the lowest it can go. It can go even lower in very low light output. 0.03 cd/m2 figured is obtained when the brightest pixel of such panel is at most 120 cd/m2. However, the reverse is also true. The brighter the panel goes, the black level also rises. That's why multiple micro displays are used, so that areas that has low luminance can let a zone to prioritize black level, while adjacent areas that has high luminance can let another zone to prioritize peak brightness. This kind of approach will allow an LCD TV to have contrast ratio much greater than a single panel.
Suppose an LCD panel has 3000:1 contrast ratio at any brightness levels for simplicity's sake. Putting two LCD panels will allow total cumulative contrast ratio to be doubleded, 6000:1. However, native contrast ratio will never ever be calculated in a cumulative manner. It will always treat it as two separated 3000:1 contrast ratio panels. And when it comes to real life-like rendition of real world, the native figure is always more accurate than zone-assisted. But the zone-assisted contrast ratio does bring out more impactful picture, along with higher dynamic range. Unlike contrast ratio, dynamic range doesn't care whether it's native or zone-assisted.
So it's possible to have high dynamic range with low (native) contrast ratio, like what FALDs do, but they will never be able to render real-life. It's also possible to have high (native) contrast ratio with low dynamic range. Simply increasing desired luminance output will also compress dynamic range akin to "Loudness War". SDR contents have optimal dynamic range at 100 cd/m2. When viewing at 200 cd/m2, you're compressing 50% of dynamic range, when viewing at 400 cd/m2, you're destroying 75% of dynamic range.
So, it's important to think of HDR not just as higher brightness, not just as lower dark area, but also the range between the two. Having wider lumiance range gives artists so much freedom to play with their creativity which wasn't possible with SDR. Some Samsung KS8000 owners mistakenly think that because their TVs are brighter than OLEDs in HDR contents, they have superior HDR performance. They're dead wrong. An ability to put out the highest luminance is important. But so is the ability to map out so many varitions of luminance in between, and the KS8000 simply can't compared to an OLED TV. Now, a low brightness OLED TV is also not ideal. Color volume is mapped 1:1 to color gamut so even though an OLED TV that can do 100% DCI/P3 color and 1000 cd/m2 peak brightness will lose 75% of said color performance when playing 4000 nit materials, but will lose nothing at all when playing 1000 nit contents.