I Need a Home Theater PC... NOW! - NVIDIA RTX HDR

It sucks when you buy into the latest technology only to wait years for the content to catch up and if you have an HDR display You know exactly what that feels like Obscure anime, old TV shows, cult classics, great movies the studio just didn't love enough Forget about it. Now there are solutions to convert SDR to HDR like this one from AJA, but $2,000? I could get an Archie X2060 for a tenth of that price on eBay and according to NVIDIA it can do the same thing which means They finally did it. What Intel and Microsoft failed to do 20 years ago NVIDIA has given the home theater PC its killer app, but there's got to be some kind of catch Okay, but does it spike power consumption like RTX super resolution? It's gotta look awful, right? Is it full of artifacts like when DLSS first came out? You're just gonna have to wait to find out Linus Fine, can I at least tell them about our sponsor? Okay Pulseway, make remote monitoring and managing your IT systems easy with instant alerts auto remediation and real-time Updates all from one platform any time any place on any device Start your free trial today with the link down below. When NVIDIA recently announced their new NVIDIA app We assumed that they would move the RTX video HDR toggle into that Alongside the beta that now works with games, but instead no it is still buried in the old NVIDIA control panel But the good news is that toggling it is as simple as click on click off Ploof suggested we start with Wicked City an anime from 1987 that looks like it's from 1987 This is pretty little bit right dude. Anyway, that's not what we're here for We want to see how our HDR toggle is going to impact the oh Well, that really is something isn't it? Yeah That flatness in the clouds in the sky Yeah, it just gives it so much more way depth kind of brightens up the whole image, which I think looks good here Yeah, it looks really flat without HDR and all of a sudden it's like you see more detail, too Right, this won't be the last time we touch on this, but that may not be the artist's intent That may be the artist's intent But as a viewer, I know which one I would choose even I like this one better, too And I tend to stick with artists intent right just like kind of a purist. This is even better. Okay, hold on a second I haven't even toggled yet. But yeah, oh the way that the night lights pop Just looks kind of brighter and bluer here It's lifting up some of the low lights which has the benefit of allowing us to see more details But honestly in the bar scene, I feel like it's taking away from the mood a little bit Yes, and that's kind of my issue with doing up mapping especially with some of these dark scenes the original grade is Smoky and hazy and kind of gloomy Whereas this is is bright. It's very colorful. Yeah poppy next up we've got Phil Tippett's mad god a stop-motion film from 2022 that suffers from the long night syndrome and Doesn't have an HDR version at the moment Okay That is Wow those lightning flashes though with the HDR toggle on huge difference first lightning flash and Okay, it's on. Whoa That's lightning. Now the color changed a lot here. Yeah, the background went to like a blood red Yeah, I don't like that over saturation it changes the mood of that scene right it really does However, the effects boy, does it ever make them pop? Oh, yeah, that looks good So you can see you can really see when it toggles you don't even have to check it's like oh, yeah Yeah I just need every movie to have a proper HDR grade because it's clear even with this faux HDR how it could look without HDR the specular highlights on us a slimy monster They don't look like slime. They just look like I don't know smooth. Yeah, tell me this though Okay, you've never seen the original grade. How pleasing is this to the eye? It's colorful I like it Do you like it? Well, I don't know what the heck's going on in the sea. I like the color. Oh The highlights so much better. So good you can really make out that detail right in the center of those specular reflections It looks like a shining light We're off to a really great start aside from some minor quibbles about color saturation in the mood There's no question that I would choose RTX video HDR over vanilla for everything. We've seen so far Except Everything we've seen is two pieces of content and none of it included live-action here's the thing a compelling use case for this tech like with their RTX super resolution upscaling is Streaming so whether you're watching someone game or drop expensive technology on your screen now You can make just about everything pop a bit more And as you're about to see it's not all sunshine and rainbows Here's a recent video that we didn't upload an HDR or did we? Wow, the sunlight linting off the garage door back there. Oh Wow, it really messes up some things like white text. I Mean, oh Wow, oh wow Some of this is okay. I mean these are people that I know obviously this is Maria and a llama day It actually adds a little bit more life likeness to them Like look at Maria particular. Oh, yeah. Yeah, like you can kind of make out the shape of her face a bit better Right once it's turned on, you know We were supposed to observe that with lighter skin tones It gives a bit of a shiny greasy look but I guess I'm maybe not affected as much as some others looks All right. I think it really just depends on how you see your skin is to be honest Everyone is going a bit rosy and orange, but it's not Like absurd it just looks a bit warmer dude overall. I think I just generally prefer it for this Oh my god, look at her necklace. That's yellow. That's metal You can just see like the specular reflections off of it like a lemon days ring pops more Okay here. Yeah. Yeah. Look I'm right here. Yeah, so not HDR Okay, HDR go again Go again. Ooh It's honestly not that different like I think your actual skin tone is right in between the two of them I think you look a slightly paler in SDR and then slightly too Oversaturated in HDR. So if we're gonna be inaccurate anyway, which of these images would you take? Oh, definitely HDR All right. Let's find some sweaty greasy looking people here You know what in this case? Yeah, you're definitely getting a little bit more glisten Just gives it a bit more depth. It doesn't feel in an unnatural way. Yeah I mean, he's sweaty as hell and there's a ton of lights in that. Oh those lights just kind of Yeah I like it. It's a weird fall-off cuz you're going from like pure white to like the shine around it That's what the court lines look like. I'll tell you that much. They don't look like that. Okay, the towels a bit much Yeah, that's a shiny towel Yeah, the court that's much actually look unnatural Yeah, that's clearly not right if we weren't toggling back and forth and we weren't thinking about it I would feel like those court lines. I'll have almost a reflective element to them Yeah in person they don't honestly The only thing that's standing out to me is that towel in the left corner that towels like unnaturally bright God's towel. I like it I just don't want to have to use the Plex web interface in order to enjoy it with my media library so if this worked with the app or was built into the shield or something like I'm ready right now. I'm mixed. I think watching it now I've kind of grown into it, but I don't know I still have to look at more things for me to like decide and it's gonna be the same for you But what I will say is aside from some quirks it works pretty well However, we haven't compared it to proper HDR mastering yet Our reptile brains just being tricked by more brightness and color Just like if we were shopping at a Best Buy to find out we're gonna use some of our own footage from my giant TV Video I've been told that one of these files is HDR and the other is SDR masquerading as HDR using Nvidia's tool That's fake. Oh They're not gonna tell me yet It's good But it's fake. You're right. I know I'm right. Yeah in some ways the image is a little more pleasing but look at this I'm pink Whoops, it's too bad. I wanted it to be perfect But obviously a properly graded piece of content is gonna pop where it's supposed to like this content behind me looks almost identical but is also going to retain the natural look of someone who is backlit and not for lit whereas I'm just Just lit. Why am I so flat flushing? It's like drinking James looks better here though, and that's interesting is Nvidia making assumptions through the selection of their training data about Properly lit people. So is this kind of like, you know Taking the the studio mode of your selfie camera and applying it to any content that you watch In fact now that I'm lit properly, it's far less noticeable. See in this dark shot. I look more Lifelike whereas this is more reflective of the fact that I have no light on me Damn, that is really close This is a very impressive example. If I didn't know that that's a bit too much brown for my couches. I Would probably take that image. You're right. It's very close. Like the display is like basically the exact same here I actually think that the Pinpoints on our light sources in the room look a little more convincing in the Nvidia version, of course We're not using exactly the same display. So there is a little bit of variation there, but there's some banding here It's like very little. Oh, you're right Well spotted. I didn't see that. That's ugly. Oh Wow Interesting now that I know what I'm looking for This is a much more egregious example of what Brandon just pointed out where that brighter object was clearly Manipulated in a way that lost some of its original quality Look at this Compared to this there's a subtle difference in glow on the track for maybe the headlights Is this I'm still very torn Looks pretty good Handled this white background Actually really well. Yeah, I know it's in a video They do a good job for the most part at recognizing when something's like a white screen and not like blowing it up Some of these look more lifelike on the fake-o one Which is very interesting So how the heck are they doing this? The first step is they expand the color gamut from s RGB to SC RGB Using a transformation matrix. I can practically hear you saying SC RGB. I Wasn't familiar with it either kind of a weird color space, but their use of it here makes a lot of sense Just like it makes sense to go with a Honeywell PTM 7950 thermal pad for your next build now available for a reasonable price from a reliable source lttstore.com SC RGB is compatible with regular s RGB But uses 16-bit floating point to calculate a massive dynamic range Compared to 8-bit integer on s RGB all while using the same white and black points So in total you end up with 281 trillion possible colors compared to the 16.7 million of s RGB Now when I say possible colors, that's because we can't actually see a lot of them making SC RGB Completely overkill for actually displaying anything Modern panels don't have 16-bit control over their pixels let alone the ability to reproduce trillions of colors But what it's great for is internal rendering and mathematical computation So with that background in mind RTX HDR kind of works like DLSS upscaling where Nvidia is taking an image Blowing it up then using machine learning to fill in the gaps. It's the same idea here just with color and light So to train their model they analyze a ton of content ideally in both HDR and SDR Then they take that converted SC RGB frame They apply their denoising algorithm And then they convert it to BT 2100 HDR using that AI model to output a finished frame that Brightens or dims specific spots in a scene or Saturates colors to help them appear more vivid ideally without it looking like a Best Buy demo. It's Really cool. It also isn't really new Windows 11 Auto HDR has been doing something kind of like this for SDR games for quite a while now Often with decent results as long as you've completed Microsoft's calibration process It's also been a thing on the Xbox Series X for a few years and it can really make those older games Pop all of a sudden bright flashes are hitting about a thousand nits and they actually flash instead of just Whiting at you. Of course all of this assumes that the display that you're using can reach that luminance level and display it accurately I've complained a lot on this channel about the HDR displays that are more like HDR-ant because while their base is certified and they can interpret an HDR signal Their backlight and panel technology just aren't good enough to make much of a difference compared to watching something in the SDR With all of that out of the way then what about Games where the competition is tighter for Nvidia's new hotness To investigate we've grabbed a couple of the latest QD OLED panels and we've upgraded our modest home theater PC with a second near Identical computer for our second monitor, by the way We'll have links to all of this stuff down below if you're looking for PC parts or maybe a new monitor Oh, look at that green that saturation on the green. Okay here. Let's look at shiny boy here. Oh, yeah yours looks so much better Okay, hold on. Let me just clip. Oh, okay, or we can shoot this shiny. Oh, okay. Yeah Well, the shine still looks good even with oh, come on. It still looks pretty decent. Yeah, it's all relative I know decency is relative these fireballs from the imps not even close What we're comparing right now is real HDR to SDR But that's not what we're supposed to be comparing. Why don't you go ahead and turn on RTX HDR? Yeah, I Can actually see the appeal of the RTX HDR version of this. Yeah, if you're into a really poppy contrasty look It's great and guess what most people tend to prefer whether it's correct or not I know they want brightness. They want contrast they want color and that's kind of what we're getting here. I honestly I'd probably turn it on even here. I think it looks a little better than the Actual native doom HDR setting. I mean the native doom HDR is pretty good, though Pretty good, and that is really poppy though. It's fun. You know, yeah, there isn't a major impact on the Visibility of dark region or anything like that. Okay What's next? Windows Auto HDR versus RTX HDR. Oh Okay This does not look very good. No, no, I agree Yes, it just doesn't have that poppy contrast. It doesn't even look as good as the HDR implementation Yeah, it doesn't like the Nvidia one is taking it even further. Yeah, this one is like not taking it as far It's very dull like look at the Candy that pops out of the enemies is not no glowy like this stuff looks okay the flashing but that looks decent in SDR Anyway, yeah, this does not look a lot better than SDR to me if at all, right? I don't think I would turn this on in this game. Anyway, it does make a lot of non HDR games pop a little more especially games who never got like they're older like 2010 and earlier than that. For example, I play a lot of Dota with Windows HDR turned on. Yeah, and Not much, you know, but when you like get the big and match accepted screen there's like all these flashes of light and it looks pretty good, but I'm gonna probably turn RTX HDR on at home. What's inconvenient? Is that every games? Implementation is going to either be best with auto HDR or best with RTX HDR or best with the games native HDR and switching between those Oh Yeah There this took a while to get working perfectly right like some games for example Don't allow you to calibrate the brightest point according to the capabilities of your display I'm gonna end up with all these blown out clip to messes RTX HDR might be way better. Oh That's fun. Oh Oh Man, it's such a small part of the scene, but it makes such a difference. It really does Interesting in the okay. Okay. It's catching these lights on the little. Oh, yeah Oh shoot. Oh balls forgot. This game is really hard. Yes The muzzle flash is wild and those muscle flashes almost look like stormtrooper shots. Yeah, they're so bright Oh Okay, not gonna lie pretty cool it's actually really not that overdone either. No And I cleaned off the water too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's that? I can't remember. I can't remember. I haven't played crisis in 15 years But I Keep expecting to like slide if I you know sprint and crouch it. No, no, man pre slide There's the old game just like super resolution. This is pretty cool tech, but it comes at a cost It doesn't use up nearly as much power as the upscaling tool But it does consume a not insignificant amount and it's still in beta So there are some bugbears for example The video HDR doesn't work on DRM protected content at least not yet. And the game HDR doesn't work If you have dual monitors at least not yet I have a wild theory that Nvidia is basically waiting for Nintendo to launch the switch to before they will launch the shield pro 2 and all of this software development is Happening very rapidly right now because they're gearing up for the release of the shield pro 2 I mean think about it the original switch and the original shield pro should be very similar in terms of hardware and Nvidia has seemingly been Due to release a successor to that damn thing for years and then with some of the recent advancements We've seen RTX HDR super resolution. I Can see the shield pro 2 being a killer box not just for watching video, right? I mean, you know, obviously this is great for that but think about it for streaming games Deblocking all those compression artifacts Just Converting to HDR on the local side so that they don't have to send all that additional information over your internet connection I am excited and I'm also excited to see more solutions for using HDR displays With content that doesn't necessarily natively support it Even if it's not perfect today and hey back to what we were talking about before if I'm wrong about the shield pro 2 Maybe at long last the home theater PC will be a thing again and you will all rue the day You mocked me for keeping my windows media center edition remote Rue it I say Just like you'll rue Asking me about our sponsor Manscaped if you're feeling a little Overgrown trim your hedges the manly way with manscapes lawnmower 5.0 ultra its trimmer blade and foil blade are Interchangeable letting you choose from five o'clock shadow bald to oh what you need a mirror Here's my head instead bald and to navigate through those more Voluminous spots the lawnmower 5.0 ultra even comes with an LED light so you can see right through the shrubbery It's also portable and charges conveniently with a USB C cable meaning you can whack the weeds anywhere you might be With a charger you probably already have check out the lawnmower 5.0 ultra at manscape.com slash tech tips and use code Tech tips for 20% off and free shipping and yet it comes with its own charger Didn't want to imply the opposite if you guys enjoyed this video make sure to check out the one about NVIDIA's upscaling technology RTX super resolution, it's also really cool