Support for HDR, WCG and other advanced display features in macOS

[kaworu1986]

How are HDR and wide color gamuts supported by macOS, if at all, when it comes to 3rd party displays?
For the sake of argument, let's say one was to hook up an Acer Predator X27 to a mac/hackintosh with matching display output (DisplayPort 1.4 or HDMI 2.0 and a recent GPU that supported everything below): which of these features would work?

• 30 bit color depth (R10G10B10): assuming yes since I have seen macOS enable it on a Dell P2415Q automatically, guessing macOS detects if the monitor supports 30BPC via DDC/EDID instead of having a whitelist.
• >60Hz refresh rate: assuming it would kick in automatically, again thans to DDC/EDID, assuming enough bandwidth available on connection
• Wider-than-sRGB color space: guessing this would not work out of the box, but would require sourcing an ICC color profile for the display and setting up macOS to use it. Once that is done macOS's color management pipeline would behave as on a 1st party wide color gamut display
• HDR: no clue, and something I'd be really curious to know. Would macOS even offer to output an HDR10 signal when detecting anything other than the Pro XDR display? If so, would support be limited to HDR videos in the TV app/iTunes/the FairPlay2 protected video path or would 3rd party apps like VLC work? What about the desktop compositor? Would macOS switch video signal to HDR10 only when playing HDR video in full screen or would it tone map SDR apps and the desktop and always output in HDR?
• VRR/GSync/FreeSync: no support at all, AFAIK the macOS driver stack has no concept of variable refresh rates

 

[mrt1976]

I've been watching this post for a while because I'm interested in the answers to these questions too, particularly the one about HDR.

Let me know if you find any answers...

 

[Jamesbond007]

For 4K HDR support : https://www.macworld.com/article/3444585/8-hidden-features-of-macos-catalina.html

 

[augustopaulo]

How are HDR and wide color gamuts supported by macOS, if at all, when it comes to 3rd party displays?
For the sake of argument, let's say one was to hook up an Acer Predator X27 to a mac/hackintosh with matching display output (DisplayPort 1.4 or HDMI 2.0 and a recent GPU that supported everything below): which of these features would work?

• 30 bit color depth (R10G10B10): assuming yes since I have seen macOS enable it on a Dell P2415Q automatically, guessing macOS detects if the monitor supports 30BPC via DDC/EDID instead of having a whitelist.
• >60Hz refresh rate: assuming it would kick in automatically, again thans to DDC/EDID, assuming enough bandwidth available on connection
• Wider-than-sRGB color space: guessing this would not work out of the box, but would require sourcing an ICC color profile for the display and setting up macOS to use it. Once that is done macOS's color management pipeline would behave as on a 1st party wide color gamut display
• HDR: no clue, and something I'd be really curious to know. Would macOS even offer to output an HDR10 signal when detecting anything other than the Pro XDR display? If so, would support be limited to HDR videos in the TV app/iTunes/the FairPlay2 protected video path or would 3rd party apps like VLC work? What about the desktop compositor? Would macOS switch video signal to HDR10 only when playing HDR video in full screen or would it tone map SDR apps and the desktop and always output in HDR?
• VRR/GSync/FreeSync: no support at all, AFAIK the macOS driver stack has no concept of variable refresh rates

These are all the right questions!

I was able to connect my hackintosh (MacPro1.1 & MacPro7.1) to my Panasonic 4K TV (hdmi2.0b) via a 48mbps 5m cable from my Radeon VII and got the HDR checkbox, but on selecting this checkbox, the TV goes off and I have to disconnect hdmi cable or restar tv...

On windows 10 it works great, 12bit, 60Hz@3840x2160p according to the AMD driver/app!

 

[slim.jim]

I have my hackintosh connect to a Vizio M437-G0 4K using HDMI with an iMacPro1,1 SMBIOS. I have the HDR check box and it does work. Checking the box the display goes black for a second and then comes back with HDR10 enabled. I am also getting support for a wide color gamut (https://webkit.org/blog-files/color-gamut/comparison.html).