Your original PS4 now supports HDR, but no games currently make use of it

Today, Sony updated the PlayStation 4 so that it supports the High Dynamic Range (HDR) colour capabilities of some UHD, or 4K, TVs.

But it's worth noting that this update seems like a prelude to HDR support on the upcoming PlayStation 4 Pro console.

That's because while your original PS4 - the actual original or the new slimmer model - does indeed support HDR from today, currently there's nothing you can run on it that makes use of the tech.

High Dynamic Range is an imaging technology that enables the reproduction of brightness and darkness while realising a much wider range of colours.

The idea is if you have a HDR-compatible telly and a console that supports HDR, you'll get visuals that are more realistic, strikingly vivid and truer to the way the human eye sees the real world.

But it looks like we'll have to wait until the PS4 Pro comes out before PlayStation consoles make much use of HDR. There are no games currently available for PS4 that offer HDR, and none of the video streaming apps on the console, such as Netflix or Amazon Instant Video, offer HDR either.

And given neither the PS4 nor the PS4 slim play 4K Blu-ray discs, the HDR update feels redundant right now.

Perhaps it's not surprising. Sony's announcement that all PS4 consoles would be updated to support HDR took developers by surprise. The Witness developer Jonathan Blow certainly didn't expect it (The Witness' planned PS4 Pro patch should use HDR on all PS4s).

That's where we're at: PS4 games need to be patched to support HDR, and it looks like it will all roll out with the PS4 Pro launch on 10th November.

Digital Foundry took a look at HDR and what it means for games and movies back in June.

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