Recent Chrome Update has broken YouTube HDR videos on Windows 10 where the videos appear with too much brightness when the “SDR content appearance” slider is set to the maximum level in HD Color Settings. Google has acknowledged the issue and readied a fix, which might land in Canary first.
Google Chrome supports HDR videos on Windows 10. You need to be using HDR Monitor and supported video cards on PCs to watch HDR content in the Chrome browser
Microsoft Edge also supports watching HDR videos on Netflix.
There have been reports on Reddit and a bug submitted to Google to indicate Chrome shows YouTube HDR Videos with a brightness that hurts your eyes when you set SDR brightness slider in Windows 10 HD Color Settings to maximum (100%).
Note: SDR content appearance slider is intended for controlling the SDR content brightness on HDR displays, but not to adjust HDR video brightness.
While watching HDR videos in VLC Player or other applications such as Media Classic hasn’t had this issue.
If you set SDR slider to 0, the remaining screen of monitor goes dark and HDR video appears fine in Chrome.
“hey all. So right now I have Windows 10 latest 1909 running with a 2080 Ti latest drivers and noticed that watching YouTube HDR videos that the videos are blown out. highlights are way too high yet in games and in Media Classic watch 4K HDr blu rays everything is fine and looks like it would.” User notes on Reddit.
“I noticed that when changing the sdr content appearance slider within Windows 10 HD color settings that it was affecting the brightness of HDR content in YouTube in Chrome. this should not happen being that this slider is meant to adjust SDR content brightness and not mess with HDR content” the Redditor added.
Other users in the thread confirmed they too have the same issue with HDR videos in Chrome on Windows 10.
Chrome versions affected are 81 and later and new Microsoft Edge is also affected.
“Chrome HDR is affected by Windows SDR’s brightness settings. It seems to compound making all HDR videos look blown out unless Windows SDR Setting is turned all the way down, making the rest of desktop unusable.” the bug description with repo steps reads.
Here are the steps to reproduce the issue
(1) Use a recent version of Chrome with an HDR display
(2) Enable HDR: Right click on Windows Desktop -> Display Settings -> “Play HDR Games and Apps”
(3) In the same Display Settings window: Click on “Windows HD Color Settings” -> check both “Play HDR Games and Apps” and “Stream HDR Video”; scroll down and turn the “SDR content appearance” slider to max (this is the standard brightness control for SDR content on an HDR display)
(4) Play an HDR video. It will probably be blown out (crushed whites). Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TOEWPDrnwQ
(3) Go back and turn the slider you adjusted to minimum. The rest of the desktop will be too dark to use, but the Chrome video will not be blown out anymore
The issue has been accepted by the Chromium team and has readied a patch to fix the issue.
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