First introduced in 2017, the specification was the display industry’s first fully open standard specifying high dynamic range (HDR) quality.
According to VESA (which stands for Video Electronics Standards Association), the updated spec, DisplayHDR version 1.2, includes significantly tighter performance requirements, including for luminance, color gamut and bit depth, as well as several new test requirements for color accuracy, contrast ratio, black levels, and subtitle flicker, to address recent advances in display technology.
VESA said that companies can begin certifying products under the new DisplayHDR 1.2 spec today. In addition, VESA will continue to allow products to be certified under the previous DisplayHDR 1.1 spec through the end of May 2025 for monitors, and May 2026 for laptops, to allow for products already in development that have been designed to meet the previous spec.
The agency noted that to date, more than 3000 display models have been certified to the DisplayHDR standard. VESA will showcase products certified to the new DisplayHDR 1.2 spec, as well as other VESA standards, at the Display Week Symposium and Exhibition taking place in San Jose, California, this week.
According to Roland Wooster, chairman of the VESA task group responsible for DisplayHDR, and the association’s representative from Intel Corp for front of screen display technology: “Since the previous update to the DisplayHDR standard nearly five years ago, the display industry has made dramatic improvements in quality while maintaining the same price points.
“As a result, VESA initiated a major undertaking to revise the standard to take full advantage of these improvements. We are thrilled to be releasing the newest version of our DisplayHDR standard―VESA’s most successful front-of-screen performance standard to date―with important updates that will help accelerate the display industry’s adoption of leading-edge display technology, which in turn will enable better-quality display products for consumers.”
The DisplayHDR CTS has undergone several revisions since it was first launched to include higher-performance tiers, new display technologies and substantially tighter specifications. Among the updates with DisplayHDR version 1.2 are significantly tighter color gamut requirements for improved color accuracy.
These include adding a DCI-P3 color gamut requirement for the DisplayHDR 400 tier, while also increasing the DCI-P3 requirement for the 500, 600 and 1000 tiers to bring them to parity with the 1400 tier. DisplayHDR 1.2 also synchronizes the color bit-depth requirement of the 400 tier with all performance levels to require a minimum of 8 bit + 2 bit dithering using frame rate control (FRC).