MediaCapabilities: Query HDR support with decodingInfo()

Category: Miscellaneous
Type: New or changed feature
Status: Enabled by default (Chrome 121)
Intent stage: Start prototyping

Summary

Extends the Media Capabilities API to allow detection of HDR rendering support via three new VideoConfiguration dictionary fields: hdrMetadataType, colorGamut, transferFunction. Chromium implements its own tone-mapping algorithms so will always return true for HDR10 (smpteSt2086) static metadata. smpteSt2094-40 (HDR10+) and smpteSt2094-10 dynamic metadata are not currently supported, so will return false. We anticipate adding support for dynamic metadata in the future, so this API will allow developers to select the appropriate content for users with support.

Motivation

This API allows capable clients to enjoy high-end media playback experiences. Otherwise, HDR content does not get served to preserve networking bandwidth, playback quality, and power consumption.

Standards & signals

Specification: https://www.w3.org/TR/media-capabilities/#hdrmetadatatype
Firefox: No signal — Some neutral discussion at TPAC.
Safari: Shipped/Shipping
Web developers: Positive
Tracking bug: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1048045

Explainers: https://github.com/w3c/media-capabilities/blob/main/explainer.md#decode-capabilities

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