What is wide color and how does it differ from HDR?

Question

I have been trying to learn about the concepts of wide color and high dynamic range and have practically drowned in a sea of marketing speak. I have limited understanding of how color works on monitors; as I understand it, there are red, green and blue lights which each stimulate one of the three types of cones in the human eye, and can operate at 256 levels of brightness. I don't have any concept of what it means for color to be "wide". Does it mean that it has more than 256 steps of precision? Does it mean it can become brighter than usual, and if so, what is the difference between that and HDR?

And moreover, when wide color is encoded on a computer, is it the usual triplet of integers? If so, what is the meaning of the usual "triangle" diagrams which show sRGB as being smaller than P3? I barely understand what a color gamut is, so if someone can enlighten me on the technical side of wide color instead of the "deeper and more profound colors", etc. marketing speak that is too often the only information that can be found on this topic.

Answer 1

I'm going to throw in a quick answer - but my message is essentially going to be...
"you have got to go research this, it's too big to be answered here."

People do degrees in this - putting the entire subject in a 4-paragraph answer is going to be one heck of a challenge.

For starters, though... HDR is 'marketing-speak'.
It doesn't have an acknowledged Standard, & without standards there is no reproducible quality control.
Very few consumer monitors even manage to be accurate to sRGB, let alone anything better. To ensure accuracy, a few hundred $£€ of hardware colorimeter needs to be invested in, & a colour workflow to follow.

Dynamic range has reference points - sRGB being the lowest common denominator; then Adobe RGB 98, then ProPhoto [which is rare] or P3 [which is the 'new sliced bread' but very few people yet have the capability to actually see it.]

You can ignore it all except sRGB if that's all your monitor can do - the rest you will never see.

The dynamic range of the human eye outstrips any hardware spec.

Answer 2

Almost all current monitors are limited to 2^8 or 256 colors. However, the best monitors can actually exceed that by having any where from 2^9 to 2^14 colors per pixel.

Today's video cards can actually produce much greater color depths than our monitors allow.

Right now I don't know where the line is drawn, I don't think there are official standards yet. I believe that HDR should mean 2^10 or more per RGB. Wide color just seems to be a marketing gimmick, at best means 100% of the 1-256 RGB range. Otherwise just more than the average monitor.

HDR10 supports up to 4,000 nits peak brightness, with a current 1,000 nit peak brightness target, 10-bit color depth and capable of displaying everything in the Rec.2020 color space.

Dolby Vision, on the other hand, supports up to 10,000 nits peak brightness, with a current 4,000 nit peak brightness target, 12-bit color depth and capable of displaying everything in the Rec.2020 color space.