Just to throw another spanner in the works of the ‘Why 4K HDR is so dark.’ issue - which I agree, it is, I recently chatted online with a rep at an A/V store and she made a comment that took me quite by surprise…

As well as asking her why my 4K HDR blu rays look so dark in comparison to my 1080p SDR blu rays, I asked her whether she thought that upgrading from my Sony LED 4K HDR TV to a Sony OLED HDR TV would make my 4K HDR blu rays look brighter and better able to reveal shadow detail.

Basically she said that OLED 4K HDR TVs aren’t necessarily better than LED 4K HDR TVs for watching 4K HDR blu rays!

She said that they both have their positives, although unfortunately she didn’t have time to go into detail about what exactly those different positives are. However I certainly noticed that she didn’t immediately say that OLED TVs are intrinsically better for watching 4K HDR blu rays than LED 4K HDR TVs are, as so many people seem to say.

The bottom line is that this rep’s comment about OLED TVs not necessarily being better than LED TVs for watching 4K HDR blu rays, went some way to confirming my suspicion that one doesn’t necessarily gain anything by upgrading from an LED TV to an OLED TV for watching 4K HDR blu rays.

However the fact is that at some point in the not-too-distant future this whole question will be rendered moot when OLED TVs take over completely from LED TVs, and they’ll be all that one can buy anyway!

The most notable disappointing experiences that I’ve had buying 4K blu rays are firstly buying ‘Scarface.’(1983) - which I found so dark as to be unwatchable, and then finding exactly the same thing with my new 4K blu ray of the new Predator movie ‘Prey.’ (2022).

I thought I knew what to expect from the 4K HDR blu ray of ‘Prey.’ having watched the 4K HDR version on Disney+ and finding it perfectly acceptable, even though it has a lot of forest-set nighttime scenes which look like they’re lit purely with open flame torches.

However whilst the 4K HDR blu ray of ‘Prey.’ is better than the Streaming version as the colours are more saturated and it’s a bit sharper (and it’s a tiny bit sharper than the 1080p disc too - although the increased sharpness on the 4K disc is only noticeable if you freeze frame and look at the image really, really closely!), it’s also noticeably darker than the Disney+ 4K HDR version.

So just as I ended up doing with ‘Scarface.’, I now only watch ‘Prey.’ on the 1080p SDR disc. In terms of colour saturation, contrast and sharpness, ‘Prey.’ looks fantastic on the 1080p disc so I don’t feel at all disappointed after waiting so long for this Film to be released on physical media.

Anyway to return to the fundamental question of ‘Why 4K HDR is so dark.’; perhaps the one piece of advice that I can offer after speaking to the A/V store rep is that maybe one shouldn’t be too quick to try to resolve the issue by splashing out on an OLED TV.

As always the best thing to do is to go into an A/V store with a 4K HDR blu ray that has particularly dark scenes in it where a lot of detail is lost in darkness, watch it on one of their 4K HDR OLED TVs (with the settings set the way you like them), and see how the image compares to your own TV.

I hope that helps at least a few people who read this.

Yes indeed! I find a lot of 4K HDR blu rays too dark.

I love the added sharpness & resolution and the Wider Colour Gamut of 4K, but the greater contrast offered by HDR is always at the expense of shadow detail. The image is just too dark!

My argument is that I want to see all the detail that the original cinematography captured and if I can’t see it, then I feel like I’m being short-changed.

Having never watched a 1080p SDR blu ray thinking ‘I wish the colours were more saturated.’; this might be a contentious statement but I have to say that on balance I think HDR is over-rated.