What does that mean?

So if you've been shopping for a television recently

particularly a 4k television

you've probably seen the letters HDR.

So what do those mean?

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range.

Ultimately it means trying to represent colors

in a more realistic, lifelike way.

Something that traditional televisions

weren't always the best at.

With cameras and photography HDR is really referring to

trying to get a camera to behave the way our eyes do.

Our irises can expand and contract as light levels change.

But cameras can't do that.

You set a settings and you take a picture.

You can change the setting and take another picture

but you're kinda stuck with what you get.

HDR technology takes a series of pictures

at different luminosity levels

and then combines them all into a mashup image.

Now with displays like this

we're really looking at something called Nits.

Nits is a unit of measurement.

It's a measurement of luminosity

which in itself is the brightness level

from a source of light.

So, when you are shopping for a TV

you are literally nit picking.

Anyway, luminosity relates to two different concepts.

Contrast, which is the difference between

your brightest whites and your darkest black colors

on a television screen.

And color representation.

The greater the number, the greater the range.

The better color representation you'll get

the more vibrant the images are.

In fact people have said the jump from 1080 resolution

to a 4K resolution wasn't really that noticeable

until HDR technology started to get rolled into it.

There are a couple of things you need to know

before you go out and buy your 4K HDR set.

One is that content is somewhat limited.

You can get certain Amazon shows that have HDR content

and Sony is rolling out some content in HDR.

But it's not everywhere and it's not magically going to turn

your old television shows into spectacular displays.

Another thing to remember is that

there are a lot of companies working on HDR right now.

So there's some competing standards at play here.

But this is the future of high resolution.

I'm sorry, ultra high resolution displays.

So when you are looking for that next television

look for those three letters and then tell somebody

hey, I know what that means.

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