Watching films on your mobile phone is an increasingly common practice, but criticized by many filmmakers; They consider that the small screen of mobile phones is not capable of presenting an experience close to that imagined by the director, and not only because of its size, but also because of the quality of the image and sound.
Regardless, it is undeniable that the mobile phone is already the preferred way for millions of people to watch the latest releases anywhere; although the experience could be greatly improved even in the best case scenario. Now Netflix can solve one of the big problems associated with movies on mobile, the low quality of HDR.
Although most new mobile phones claim to have HDR compatible displays and boast of adopting the latest industry standards, the reality is that the implementation leaves a lot to be desired in most cases. And getting good HDR is not something easy nor something that is “free” with an AMOLED screen as some brands seem to think.
As a result, Netflix movies in HDR look very bad on some phones. The most common symptoms are a dull image when playing HDR content; This effect occurs in high-contrast scenes, in which the panel chooses to automatically reduce brightness. In other cases, a battery saving program may be causing the panel’s capabilities to “capped out.” So while in theory it supports HDR, in practice there are rare occasions where the image displays as it should.
NOW, Android Authority discovered a new option in the Netflix app for Android, which could solve this problem; or rather, avoid it altogether. The new button, which is not yet usable, would allow the user switch between HDR and SDR while streaming content.
SDR is the “normal” image as we know it, without the contrast enhancements provided by HDR; but ironically, SDR is better if our phone does not display HDR correctly. By playing the video as is, the screen would be able to display higher brightness and above all greater contrast between dark and light areas, which would help improve the quality of the image.
This button can also be very useful if we simply don’t want to watch HDR content even if our phone displays it well. For example, if we are in the dark, the increased brightness can be very annoying and an SDR image would be preferable. At the moment, Netflix has not announced the launch of this feature, but if it is already in the application code, I hope it will not be long.
