Chrome HDR is broken on Windows 10, but a fix is on the way

According to users’ reports on Reddit, both Chrome(v81 and later) and Edge users on Windows 10 are facing an issue where the brightness level of the HDR content on YouTube is incorrect when some modification is made to the “SDR content appearance” slider found in the “Windows HD Colour Settings” page.

Setting the “SDR content appearance” slider to a maximum level in HD Color Settings will automatically increase the brightness level of the HDR contents on YouTube, whereas, in an ideal scenario, changes to the “SDR content appearance” slider should impact only the SDR content and not HDR videos.

“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 to high yet in games and in Media player classic watching 4k HDR blu rays everything is fine and looking like it should,” a Reddit user wrote. “i noticed that when changing the sdr content appearance slider within windows 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.”

A number of users corroborated the issue on the Reddit thread. “Just noticed the exact same thing. I cranked the slider to 100 to brighten up the desktop. Went and played an hdr video on YouTube and melted my eyes. Backed slider down to 50 and brightness lowered in the same video. I too thought this should not happen,” another Reddit user noted.

On the brighter side, however, the Chromium team has acknowledged the issue and has readied a fix, which is likely to be available on the Canary channel first.

“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.

If you want to reproduce the issue, you can follow the below steps:

(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.

Have you tried to reproduce the issue by following the above steps? if yes., are you facing the same issue? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: Reddit; via Techdows