SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
DisplayPort Alt Mode 2.0 Spec Released: Defining Alt Mode for USB4
As the tech industry gears up for the launch of the new USB4 standard, a few more parts first need to fall into place. Along with the core specification itself, there is the matter of alternate modes, which add further functionality to USB Type-C host ports by allowing the data pins to be used to carry other types of signals. Keeping pace with the updates to USB4, some of the alt modes are being updated as well, and this process is starting with the granddaddy of them all: DisplayPort Alt Mode.
The very first USB-C alt mode, DisplayPort Alt Mode was introduced in 2014. By remapping the USB-C high speed data pins from USB data to DisplayPort data, it became possible to use a USB-C port as a DisplayPort video output, and in some cases even mix the two to get both USB 3.x signaling and DisplayPort signaling over the same cable. As a result of DisplayPort Alt Mode's release, the number of devices with video output has exploded, and in laptops especially, this has become the preferred mode for driving video outputs when a laptop doesn't include a dedicated HDMI port.
If you're willing to accept Display Stream Compression... New DisplayPort spec enables 16K video over USB-C
Previously: Forget USB 3.2: Thunderbolt 3 Will Become the Basis of USB 4
DisplayPort 2.0 Announced, Triples Bandwidth to ~77.4 Gbps for 8K Displays
Speed-Doubling USB4 is Ready -- Now We Just Have to Wait for Devices
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday May 02 2020, @02:00AM
It's High Dynamic Range. It doesn't actually require any kind of real world photography, e.g. a video game can render areas using HDR, using whatever techniques they want to in real time (including "ray-tracing" now). You can see some examples [resetera.com] here. Some games do it well, others suck at implementing it.
Amazon and Netflix have pushed to make a lot of HDR content recently. The director of A Series of Unfortunate Events complained about how it looked [archive.org], basically calling it a gimmick that ruined the cinematography. YMMV.
Displays are advertised as having a peak luminance, such as 400, 600, 800, 1,000 [soylentnews.org], 3,000, or 10,000 nits (staring directly at the Sun would be 1 billion nits). When an HDR game, movie, or TV show is playing, it will have the normal color information for each pixel, as well as brightness. Emissive display technologies like OLED and MicroLED can adjust the brightness of every single pixel. LCD needs to split the TV/display's backlight into a small number of sections/zones with brightness levels, and has nowhere near the "infinite" contrast level [soylentnews.org] of emissive, so it is ultimately a dead end technology used for cheap HDR implementations.
If I got any of this info wrong, just know I don't own any HDR products.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]