The SDR standard allowed picture information sent to your TV in a range from 0.1 candelas per meter squared (aka nits) - that’s your blackest - to the brightest and whitest of 100 nits. The SDR standard was developed around the aging cathode ray tube – that’s the CRT in CRT TV. We were quite happy with it, but I’d argue that’s because we didn’t know what we were missing. That’s because in 2014 we started getting HDR - or high dynamic range - in both our TVs and the video itself, thus changing dramatically how brightness was used by a TV.īefore we had HDR, we made do with standard dynamic range. Exciting, even! SDR - the old standardīrightness in today’s TVs means something very different than it did just nine or 10 years ago. And high-contrast images generally are very pleasing. When you can have bright, sparkling elements on a screen comingling with dimmer or darker elements, you get contrast. The untrained eye is less likely to spot that a shade of red doesn’t appear just right, as it is to notice that the image in general either does or does not really seem to pop off the screen. Your eyes are way better at perceiving contrast than they are at perceiving, say, color fidelity. Also, brightness is on the positive end of contrast, and contrast is the most easily recognizable aspect of picture quality to the human eye. First, it makes images generally easier to see - a bright TV image is easier to see in an already bright room. I promise.īrightness helps us in two meaningful ways. What does brightness do for an image that makes us say, “That’s good! My eyes love to see it!”? Measuring brightness is more exciting than it looks. Now let’s talk about why brightness is valuable. But I’ll dig into that some more in a moment. Without knowing your nits from a 9-inch nail, you probably can surmise that the higher number is more desirable. You may hear that one TV’s peak brightness is 1,000 nits, but another can push up to 1,500 nits. So that’s the word I use whenever I talk about how bright a TV can get. When I measure a TV’s light output using a spectrophotometer and/or colorimeter (I personally use an X-Rite i1Publish Pro 2 and a Portrait Displays C6), the result I get is expressed in nits.
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