The Difference Between 4K and HDR for Video Displays

To get a better understanding of HDR (High Dynamic Range) versus 4K in regards to LED video displays, Justin and Matt sat down with Lane Munson, Daktronics Product Manager. Lane has been with Daktronics for more than 30 years and for the past 15 years he has been in the role of Product Manager for our live video and advertising displays. This include displays in sports venues, both in-bowl and out-of-bowl applications, as well as exterior signage, marquees and multiple other applications for digital signage.

This brings us to the topic of HDR and how it fits with everything Daktronics can provide. Here’s an excerpt from that conversation:

Justin Ochsner
When talking about high level LED display systems, there are some terms in the industry that we’re hearing a lot about. It started as high definition that people were looking to achieve and now they're looking at something called 4K or HDR. Is that's something that's in our repertoire at Daktronics?

Lane Munson
Those are obviously industry terms. When you talk about video electronics or televisions – anything that is either consumer related or more business related – it has to deal with the image quality that the display can produce, whatever type of display that is.

You mentioned 4K. Previous to that was HD technology and MP and those different levels of pixel resolution. What I mean by that is the number of light emitters that you actually have in the display itself.

Your HD technology is 1080 by 1920 and that’s the physical resolution of the display, number of pixels high by number of pixels wide.

4K is four times that size for HD level signals or size of resolution. Then 8K is double that.

Justin Ochsner
So, they’re just packing pixels in there.

Lane Munson
And the more pixels you have to generate colors. Which is a nice segue to talk about HDR.

So, by comparison, regardless of whether you have HD, 4K, 8K or any pixel resolution in between, HDR refers to how well you control each of those pixels and the color that you can generate out of each of those pixels. We talk about SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) versus HDR – there are industry standards that are set out there for what that means and that SDR is basically what the old CRT televisions were able to produce for color range. The base colors are red, green and blue. And any kind of permutation or variation between those three colors, that’s what a CRT could produce – the best of what they could produce.

Once you move beyond that, then you start working toward HDR. And that’s another threshold that been put out there with regards to the color depth or color space. Now we’re able to create deeper blues, deeper greens, deeper reds and, of course, the mixtures of those colors, and there are certain criteria that it takes to get to that point.

Matt Anderson
So, the colors are just deeper in the same base colors?

Lane Munson
Right. You think about the most colors you can produce and those are even beyond what the eye can see. And there’s a threshold that’s being specified in projects out there where it’s basically to the full extent of what they eye can see. I can see many more colors than what a camera traditionally has been able to produce. If you’re taking a picture or taking a camera view of an outdoor scene and you look at it, your view of that outdoor scene looks better than what’s coming across through the video system.

That’s the basic premise. Beyond that is trying to get closer and closer and closer to what real life imaging looks like; trying to get the full depth of color that is produced in nature to be reproduced through the video system.