Peter Benson wrote:Anyone, do tell -- for the O.P. (original poster)'s benefit,
1. Which of the two Dell displays she's comparing is QHD (and what exactly does that mean -- "Quasi HD"? Quad HD (e.g , UltraHD 3840×2160)?
2. How is it that the UHD (aka "4k") model Dell display under review, makes for a better choice for Rec709 color, rather than the alternate display, which likely performs well within that Rec709 color space -- and beyond, considering the O.P. seems to allude to color accuracy being of critical importance to her?
3. Your suggesting she'd "really want a display with HDR luminance levels of 1000 nits ideally" -- is that a reslistic expectation for one looking to spend $500 or thereabouts for a brand new display -- and in that price range, us it realistic to expect the manufacturer to provide that performance parameter in their published specifications?
[Anyone feel free to interact on these.] Thanks in advance.
[Re]Pete
QHD is not the same as UHD as the names imply.
QHD = 2560x1440 which is a format almost no videographer is going to use for final output, and thus for any sensible price/performance optimized choice for a grading monitor.
UHD = 3840x2160 - the most common of the 4K standards.
The problem with many monitors that have a color gamut greater than sRGB/709 is that they don't manage the colors correctly, and even if you're sending a sRGB/709 signal the monitor stretches it to the full gamut of the display panel. Clearly this would make for an awful situtation in grading, as your grading would look super saturated, you'd likely reduce the colors to make it look good on the grading monitor (because your grading monitor is misconfigured/misperforming) and your end result would ultimately be very flat.
The suggestion I made is that it would be more useful to use a 4K display with the correct sRGB/709 color gamut, than to use a QHD monitor which might result in incorrect color stretching when being used as a grading display.
Further more, it is obviously very simple and clean for a 4K monitor (3840x2160) to also display 1080P content crisply without any pixel interpolation, as every source pixel can simply be displayed on a block of 2x2 (4 pixels). On a QHD panel all 1080P source pixels would need to be mapped to 1.4 pixels horizontally and 1.4 vertically, obviously not being possible this results in some compromises.
Currently HDR-1000 is out of range for most, and certainly at the $500 price point. I am working with the display industry to bring 27" 4K IPS HDR-1000 monitors down from $2000 to somewhere in the $500-700 price point, but you won't see those products until middle next year.
Roland.