This is a lot of technical mumbo jumbo for a simple thing like brightness. HDR is a gimmick like 3D TVs. The best image quality is not the one with the most colors, which is entirely pointless, but instead a simple image, with no fancy features that only serve to distract the eye.

Like in the famous case of the Apple logo in the 1990s. Steve Jobs, when asked why he uses a black and white Apple logo instead of a color one, said - "color will only distract the eye from what's important".

I feel like the whole emoji example might favor your point of view, but that, delightfully, grandparent commenter’s example is one of the better counterpoints I’ve seen.

Selectively deployed, a glint of extra brightness, above and beyond the “100%” baseline, simulates the glints and shimmers that draw our eyes naturally—in this case, in the same manner as gilt on the physical counterpart to the books they’re depicting. It fits in cleverly with a long tradition for that specific context.

Where I agree is with the idea that brighter-for-brighter’s-sake is not better after a certain point, any more than color-because-we-can. And it seems, as far as I can tell, that uniformly cranking up the full frame brightness into the HDR range is not The Done Thing, at least in film and design, at least so far. Possibly for compatibility with the wide range of displays stuff will end up on.

Agreed, this is exactly why I only watch silent era black-and-white films.

Hard disagree. HDR is more than just boosted brightness, but the boosted brightness on it's own has been (in my humble opinion) the biggest advancement in TVs in the past decade. For instance, I'd choose a 500 nit 1920x1080 panel over a 250 nit 3840x2160 panel any day.

Yep, watching a logo is exactly like watching a movie

calling HDR a gimmick is somewhat silly considering it's already in widespread use for media, and it's great