2025 was the beginning of the end of the TV brightness war
TL;DR
The TV industry's 'brightness war,' driven by HDR technology, appears to be peaking in 2025, similar to the audio industry's past loudness war.
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Much like the audio industry's compression-driven loudness war, which reached its distortion-fueled apex (and not the good kind) with Metallica's Death Magnetic in 2008, the television industry has been having its own battle the past couple of years: the brightness war. Sparked by the introduction of HDR and its higher brightness mastering levels, brands began to push display technology to achieve the necessary light output for HDR movies.
As we hit the 10th anniversary of HDR's introduction (to the consumer space, at least), 2025 felt like a new crescendo in the "who can be brighter" back-and-forth between brands. Not only did we get our f …