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Apple Silicon M1 supports “billion of colors” a.k.a. HDR 10-bit output
- dawnerd 6y agoIm confused why there was any question of wether it supported HDR or not. Apple has had it listed for a while: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210980 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210980
- barkingcat 6y agoAlso this is confusing because I would expect it's not the chip that "supports" colours but the display. If you hook an M1 Mac Mini up to an old display that uses 8 bit colour you're not going to get "billions of colors" If they are talking about the laptops, it should be that the Laptops/laptop displays supports billions of colors.
- chrisseaton 6y ago> Also this is confusing because I would expect it's not the chip that "supports" colours but the display. Is't the chip SoC and so includes the graphics hardware? Doesn't that bit have to support the colours?
- gameswithgo 6y agoYou could probably make it happen with any graphics hardware, but it might be slow with some.
- chrisseaton 6y agoThat's not how graphics hardware works. If the busses to the output are only so wide, you can't make them wider with software.
- singhkays 6y agoYou need both. For e.g. if you take an older GPU like GTX 280, that's not going to output 4K or HDR signal.
- Dylan16807 6y agoWell if you find the right model it should be possible, you should have cited something even earlier. The chip in a GTX 280 is capable of 10-bit output and displayport output, so that gets you at least 4K at 30 fps. (I can't find an example model that had displayport, but I can find earlier models that did.)
- singhkays 6y agoAuthor here: I found this page after writing the blog but found it surprising that Apple has listed HDR support here but not on the actual product pages.
- gardaani 6y agoYeah, Apple documentation isn't always so great. A month ago HT210980 still claimed that MacBook Air M1 can't play HDR on external displays [1]. It nice that they have now updated that document. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20201218041928/https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210980 https://web.archive.org/web/20201218041928/https://support.a...
- jiggawatts 6y agoThis isn't surprising, and isn't that big a deal. Most modern high-end laptops have HDR support and/or 10-bit output. Similarly, most modern CPUs and GPUs can accelerate 10-bit video decoding in hardware.
- zamadatix 6y agoNot even high end, even if your i3 laptop is from 2016 or newer the integrated graphics likely supports 10 bit HDR output.
- tyingq 6y agoA couple of the newish Chromebooks have 10-bit HDR support now. So, even the bottom end is getting it now. The Samsung Galaxy 2 Chromebook has a retail of $549.
- ogre_codes 6y agoI don't think the author was trying to make a big deal out of it. They were just confirming something which wasn't clear from the product specs. Even though Apple doesn't list it, it has 10 bit color.
- AuthorizedCust 6y agoCurrently, this article has only 14 points and two comments suggesting it is not a big deal. Why did it rise to position three on Hacker News?
- gbear605 6y agoWhat other posts is it competing with? Right now all the other posts at the top of the front page are older and many of them have similar amounts of comments and points. It seems that HN just isn’t very active right now.
- ogre_codes 6y agoPeople are so distracted by the Gamestop mess not a lot of submissions?
- xirbeosbwo1234 6y agoDoes anyone know how the ranking algorithm on this site works? If not, I'm going to block it from my network. I don't care for another opaque algorithm controlling my information. It's not like I'd miss out on much intelligent discussion...
- astrange 6y agoI expect dang does, since he runs the site.
- grzm 6y agoFrom the FAQ: > How are stories ranked? > The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way. > Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html You're unlikely to get a more detailed answer as it can lead to (more) of the system.
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- VoxPelli 6y ago“For as long as we’ve had TVs, color has been an important metric to judge the display’s quality.” Um, no, we had TVs for quite a while before it got any colors, in the beginning it was all gray scale.
- creddit 6y agoYeah, but people really wanted those greys to pop!
- killjoywashere 6y agoActually, yes, they did. This is why, for decades, photographers collected pieces of red, green, yellow, and blue glass, gel filters, and polarizers to put in front of or between their lenses, seeking ways to increase or mute contrast as desired. Ansel Adams' zone system of photography was all about understanding how to get colors into different zones of grey.
- creddit 6y agoActually, I know, which is why I said that :)
- lewisinc 6y agoActually, yeah! One example of this is the set of the Adams Family, which famously had a ton of pinks and bright pastels despite being a supposedly gothic set specifically because those colors created the best contrast in the final medium, a black and white tv set :)
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- lstamour 6y agoSo I’m not convinced this is actually “billions of colours”. Technically, it means having a 10-bit colour encoding over the wire such that you can express over a billion colours. The distinction between 8-bit and 10-bit is not actually sRGB vs HDR in the same way as dithering a GIF to a maximum of 256 colours lets you display the sRGB colour space but limits you to only 256 colours of it. https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/using/dithering-web-images.html https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/using/dithering-w... Similarly, you can turn on that little High Dynamic Range checkbox and get HDR but only have 16.7 million colours at your disposal because it’s output in 8-bits per colour rather than 10-bits per colour. And it’s really hard to tell the difference sometimes between 8-bit HDR and 10-bit HDR. Like really hard. Like usually only visible when doing colour grading such that you need every possible nuance of data to more accurately shade and re-colour your pixels. https://youtu.be/MyaGXdnlD6M https://youtu.be/MyaGXdnlD6M Of course I imagine there’s also good vs bad dithering and the output to the attached laptop computer screen is probably better than the multiple cables and adapters required to output to TVs and external displays, but... the easiest way to tell whether something supports billions of colours is to go into monitor preferences and look for 10-bit or 422 or 444. If you see 420 or 8-bit, technically you might still have HDR but you don’t have “billions of colours”, technically.
- singhkays 6y agoAuthor here: I hear you. I had to double check a bunch of time whether you can get HDR with 8-bit displays. It seems like not all TV panels out there are 10-bit and they still claim to support HDR. That's why I played the Spears and Munsil test pattern video with a 8-bit and 10-bit pattern on the same video. The 10-bit pattern was smooth which convinced me that it was outputting 10-bit signal. I also confirmed the TV and monitor I used has a 10-bit panel (not 8-bit + FRC). > monitor preferences and look for 10-bit or 422 or 444. If you see 420 or 8-bit I tried the monitor info but didn't find this information. Neither in the TV info. Also Apple hides this information in their System Report. If you have other tests in mind, I'm happy to test more and get to the bottom of this :)
- bhewes 6y agoTrue HDR needs local dimming, so very few monitors outside of mini leds, oleds, and reference displays have large amounts local dimming, but it is coming to consumer displays.
- kibwen 6y agoIs this a high enough bit depth to eliminate the visual banding of gradients? If not, then what is? Because that would seem to be approximately the depth beyond which there would never be any benefit to further increasing it.
- judge2020 6y agoIn general it does fix it, although a low-bitrate video or incorrectly encoded video can also introduce contouring/banding. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Media/Formats/Video_codecs#effect_of_source_video_format_on_encoded_output https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Media/Formats/V... > Additionally, in saturated portions of the image (that is, where colors are pure and intense, such as a bright, pure red [rgba(255, 0, 0, 1)]), color depths below 10 bits per component (10-bit color) allow banding, where gradients cannot be represented without visible stepping of the colors. Info on banding: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Media/Formats/Video_codecs#contouring https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Media/Formats/V...
- anfilt 6y ago8 bit per channel is already enough to avoid banding. However, if you are editing content with 8 bits per channel its pretty easy to reach a situation when mixing colors or applying numerous effects will create banding. So ideally you convert to a much higher bit per channel or floating point. Then perform all editing in that that higher precision format and then once you have applied everything to the channel finally convert it back to 8 bit. TLDR; If you display something and thats it, 8 bits is enough (generally). Start feeding it through mathematical functions you need more precision otherwise error compounds.
- the8472 6y agoWithout dithering 8bpc is not sufficient to avoid banding, especially on very shallow gradients or those covering large areas. The color steps may be subtle but the step-like way in which bands change is still visually distinguishable.
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- xirbeosbwo1234 6y agoBig deal. So does the three-year-old Walmart laptop I keep in my garage. I find the reaction to the M1 pretty funny. People are impressed by the silliest things.
- pram 6y agoThe article is confirming that it's supported, not that it's some brand new thing on the M1 jfyi
- akersten 6y agoSo, I'll admit to being a Luddite on the whole HDR thing, but I suppose it's worth figuring out in the case it becomes commonplace and not another fad like 3D TV. How does HDR affect colors in software? For example, on a 10-bit display - does my "legacy" website showing #FFF, show a true brightest-white color, or would I need to use a special definition to achieve it? Unfortunate, as I'm sure the hex value for a 10-bit 3-tuple is not quite as "perfect" as #000000-#FFFFFF. e.g. like `color: rgbhdr(#0x3FF3FF3FF)` If I use a non-HDR-aware color-picker app (or take a screenshot), and pick HDR content versus normal content, is there a translation layer that scales down the value to RGB? Or does it clamp and "overexpose"? It's a whole new world. I googled "HDR in CSS" and got this[0] which is not quite "stubborn programmer who thinks this is a gimmick" friendly... Anyone have a good resource that explains how one would use HDR colors in practice? And ideally one that touches on considerations like the interactions between HDR-aware and non-HDR-aware applications. [0]: https://w3c.github.io/ColorWeb-CG/ https://w3c.github.io/ColorWeb-CG/
- friedman23 6y ago> but I suppose it's worth figuring out in the case it becomes commonplace and not another fad like 3D TV. HDR is already here to stay
- munchbunny 6y agoI think it's a big fat "it depends". For example, do GIFs even do HDR? And is there a 10-bits-per-channel specification for PNG's? (I haven't tried to look that up.) Since HDR is a superset of the non-HDR color space, I suspect there will be not that much fuss converting 8-bit to 10-bit, but a whole lot of "magic" involved in converting 10-bit down to 8-bit.
- dmitshur 6y agoPNG supports up to 16-bit depth, and it’s actually a good choice based on an analysis[1] Netflix did in 2018. [1]: https://netflixtechblog.com/enhancing-the-netflix-ui-experience-with-hdr-1e7506ad3e8 https://netflixtechblog.com/enhancing-the-netflix-ui-experie...
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- jzer0cool 6y agoOne of my very first jobs I worked to test VGA cards. They were 4mb and 8mb. Yes you read that right, that is "m" as in megabytes. My setup was a 25 megahertz open case motherboard, a few of these. It was part of the last quality control station and I would pop each vga card into the PCI slot and boot it up. I would basically run a macro which cycle through the resolutions from b/w, 4 colors, 16, 256, ... and up to a million or so. I think there is a name for this, but basically watching a prism of rainbow colors. At a million+ the color tones are very smooth and you don't see an outline. I could not imagine I would be able to differentiate a billion colors from its previous factor. At that point, I would stamp it and it goes off to shipping for packaging, and to the customers.
- ecopoesis 6y agoThey must have been fancy to use PCI. I would have expected ISA of AGP.
- jimsmart 6y agoPCI was in fact pretty standard for graphics cards, in the period between ISA and AGP. Edit: link https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/graphics-beginners,1288-4.html https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/graphics-beginners,1...
- throwaway87521 6y agoWell, now I feel old.
- barrkel 6y agoPCI graphics was standard around the time of Windows 3.11 and into Windows 95. Major difference in UI speed vs EISA graphics. I used to work as a hardware technician in a local computer shop as a summer / weekend job back then. I installed dozens of 4mb Cirrus Logic PCI graphics cards when building PCs.
- jzer0cool 6y agoIf I remember, AGP did not come out until later. The motherboard multiple ISA and 1 PCI slot if I recall right. In fact I was testing VGA and also sound cards on the ISA slot. So checking sound and playing some mpeg video file. I can maybe write up a short post about this if anyone would be interested more. At home, away from work, I owned a mac which was running the power pc processor. And that was also 25 mhz. What I remember was how everything seemed integrated (e.g. not upgradable. Young me could not understand why there was no graphics card. I could only upgrade here the hard drive, or simm memory)
- cromwellian 6y agoA little bit of Apple hagiography in there, claiming Apple is usually first. Discrete video cards have consistently been at the forefront of features like this, leading Apple by years. The difference is, the consumer must decide to build a system with these features. If I want an HDR system, I buy an HDR capable discrete card, HDR capable monitor, etc and put it all together. What Apple does is assemble it all in a base model, like a console, so that all models have the feature set as base. And like other commenters have pointed out, PCs with HDR have been shipping long before, especially "workstation" machines.
- singhkays 6y agoAuthor here: I don't believe I'm claiming Apple is first to support HDR. I'm pointing out that Apple talked about a lot of things about M1 but not HDR or 10-bit output. Not even in their product pages. I test this out myself to see if it's actually supported.
- mehrdada 6y ago> The prominent use of color no doubt stems from Steve Jobs obsessing over the smallest details. Actually color in the history of Apple stems from Woz not Jobs, who added color to Apple II. Jobs in fact reverted to black and white in Macintosh/original NeXT and spent the compute/memory resources on other things (e.g. higher res).
- analog31 6y agoThe memory resources must have been tight, because the original Mac had like a 512x342 pixel display, not even enough to display a full page width of text. I'm not sure it had gray scale. An additional factor may have been speed, since it was doing things with graphics that may have been too slow if they had to manipulate larger blocks of data.
- RodgerTheGreat 6y agoConveniently, it's just the right size for an 80 column terminal with a little space left over for window borders and a scroll bar.
- analog31 6y agoIt's fascinating that today, I don't even know how many pixels my screen has, but I still remember doing the math to figure out how many columns a display could support. I sweated bullets over those numbers because I was buying my first computer in 1984 and wanted to be sure that I could really type a term paper on it. I had a chance to play with a Mac, but it was priced out of my league at the time.
- klodolph 6y agoThe original Mac had 128 KiB RAM, and a 512x342 framebuffer takes 21 KiB. That’s not unreasonably tight, but 4-bit color would be 86 KiB. The IBM EGA card came out in 1984, same year as the Mac, and supported 640x350 with 16 colors, but I think the cost of the monitor + card was somewhere around $1K, and the 640x350@4bpp mode was only supported if you also bought a RAM expansion daughterboard. The Mac’s launch price was $2,500, for comparison. Adjusting for inflation, the EGA card was something around $2,500 in 2020 dollars, and the Mac was around $6,200.
- slayerjain 6y agoI just got a 16GB M1 MBP, and I can see the HDR option in Youtube even on the inbuilt display. Didn't know that the inbuilt display supported HDR too. I thought HDR was going to be reserved for the future mini-LED displays.
- skavi 6y agoA lot of newer MacBooks display HDR via macOS's EDR. This doesn't suddenly increase the bit depth of the display, but does allow the video to increase its peak brightness values beyond that which the user has set. This is done by physically increasing the backlight brightness and dimming the LCD around the video content to keep UI brightness levels consistent. The UI bit depth actually decreases once EDR kicks in.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoFun fact: In human testing, subjects cannot tell the difference between 8-bit RGB and 10-bit RGB except for greyscale gradients. (I wish I could link the study, but I found it during the peak of my 2012-era graphics career. Suffice to say, more devs should study the science of perceptual testing.)
- pixel_fcker 6y agoFor low-dynamic range maybe, but for HDR 8-bit is definitely not enough.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoIf you measure this in a rigorous, scientific way, you will be forced to conclude that 8-bit RGB is enough. The reasons why are interesting, but it has to do with how the eye processes images and color. Remember, you can turn your screen as bright as you want. But it doesn't help the content appear more "real" or "better" or "HDR-like". Therefore, HDR is simply "the ability to discern between different levels of color." And if you try to measure exactly how many levels of color a human can discern, the answer is no more than the 256^3 available via 8-bit RGB. The precise claim: if you have two screens next to each other, one 8-bit RGB and one 10-bit RGB, and both screens are color calibrated / brightness calibrated identically, and the viewing conditions are identical for both screens, then if you blindfold someone and put them in front of a random screen, they will be unable to say "Ah, this is the 10-bit RGB screen!" more than random chance.
- tjoff 6y agoIf you show a grayscale gradient anyone not legally blind would pick the 10bit display in a fraction of a second.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoGrayscale gradients, yes. Anything else, no. That was what researchers discovered.
- jariel 6y agoIndustry is going to have to get their nomenclature straightened out because nobody really knows what's going on in consumer land. HD was something people understood - 4K maybe. Beyond that, not so much.
- occamrazor 6y ago2^30 is just above 1 billion. Isn’t “billions of colors” at least imprecise, if not false advertising?
- Tepix 6y agoWhile we're on the subject - has anyone connected a 5K monitor to the Macbook Air M1 using a DisplayPort 1.4 port yet? In particular the Viewsonic XB2779QQS-S1... (
- tedd4u 6y agoVery strange. With an M1 MacBook Air, the Costa Rica video plays in Safari using rec.709 (non-HDR) and in Chrome with bt.2020 (HDR). Article uses an M1 Mac mini connected to external monitors so it's a different test but it showed Safari playing bt.2020 (doesn't say anything about Chrome). Seems like it will take time for this all to shake out.
- joshspankit 6y ago“Usually, this would list a value of 30-bit here (i.e. 10-bit per RGB channel)“ Anyone else remember the early days when you could actually choose 32bit colour in system preferences? Drives me crazy that it’s taken this long to get back to unbanded gradients.