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Comment by numpad0 | Hacker News Reader

> HDR is mainstream – From just a quick browsing of BestBuy, nearly all TVs over 42” are 4K and support HDR. 9th gen consoles are shipping with HDR on by default. The majority of your audience is HDR-equipped.

"Mainstream" or "majority" in context of Nintendo is a $20-40k/yr white collar household with 2 kids. The REAL mainstream. Some would have real ashtrays on a dining table. ~None of them had bought any of TVs over 42" with 4K resolution and HDR support in past 10 years.

Though, I do wonder how globally mainstream is such a household buying Nintendo hardware. Admittedly it could be somewhat of a local phenomenon.

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I don't know how out of touch you have to be to think a family with two kids making $20k a year is affording a switch 2 on release.

Japanese average income is $32k, the JP special of Switch 2 is $350, Switch 1 sold 37m, and Japanese working age population under is ~74m(out of 120m).

Either six-figure Nintendo gamers are hoarding boxes full of Switch 1 in the attic and completely destroying the statistics, or everyone at that income bracket is sophisticated enough to desire one.

Frankly, this is why I'm wondering how normal it is globally, because I believe Japan is not supposed to be a village of broke Vulcans. Maybe the nerds are in fact hoarding tons of Switches.

My bad. I didn't know you were talking about Japan. I assumed you were talking about America.

You’re probably underestimating how many “real” mainstream families still have a TV. A 4k HDR tv is cheaper than a Switch 2. Hell, you can get a 75” 4k HDR tv for the same price. The cheapest 55” 4k HDR tv at Walmart ($238) is almost half the price of a Switch 2 ($450)

TVs are a very cost effective home entertainment device, and 4k HDR is the default these days.

Lots of cheap LCD panels advertise HDR, but don’t really have the brightness or contrast to do it properly. I’ve got two HDR TVs and one HDR monitor where the claims of being HDR are an absolute gimmick.

I'd qualify that as "most" LCD panels can't do HDR properly. I'm likely grossly overestimating, but maybe 10% have enough local dimming zones and high enough peak brightness that they can demonstrate a passable effect with some glowing and slow transitions.

OLED has ABL problems, so they can do HDR400, but anything with a higher brightness than that is problematic.

I feel like HDR support is so divergent that you're not ever going to match "properly mastered" content in the way the article author wants. That's why no developers want to spend time on it.

Not sure why you would associate “white collar” with poverty. While technically there are poor office workers, this is not the typical association.

That sentence raised my eyebrows too. What it actually demonstrates is that shops sell hdr, nowhere it means that everyone bought hdr screens.

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