The effect of labeling on the perceived quality of HDR video transmission

At the time of this paper, high dynamic range (HDR) visualization has already emerged in both the industry and the commercial sector, with HDR displays already present on the consumer market and the technology marching towards the goal of becoming the de facto format of multimedia. HDR is thus often looked at and praised as the next logical step in the evolution of audiovisual entertainment. However, there is no such thing as a single, universal HDR standard, and the competing market projects a future with even more diversity in format specifications, display capabilities and content characteristics. As the competitors attempt to surpass each other and obtain a bigger share of the global market, they inevitably bombard the potential customers and users with brief but effective labels that reflect excellence and superior quality. In this paper, the cognitive effect of such labels is investigated. As home video entertainment is possibly the most numerous instance of the future usage of this visualization technology, video streaming is particularly addressed. Since real-time video transmission services are bound to suffer playback interruptions upon insufficient data rates and uncompensated drops in the available bandwidth, stalling events experienced in conventional multimedia streaming shall apply to HDR video as well. The paper presents four separate experiments, studying how the cognitive bias caused by the labeling effect influences the perception of HDR quality aspects and stalling events, and how the cognitive load varies for stalling detection thresholds between conventional and HDR visualization.