This real-time software transforms regular movies into vibrant HDR

High Dynamic Range, known more colloquially as HDR, promises the best picture quality you'll ever see on a TV (at least until the next big leap).

It provides higher contrast, wider dynamic range, deeper blacks, and whiter whites, making newer movies and TV shows more immersive. But there are two big caveats to enjoying the glory of HDR at home: Your TV needs to support it and the content needs to be coded for it.

In other words, watching non-HDR coded video (which is virtually everything), even on a fancy HDR-ready TV, won't add anything.

But that could all change thanks to newly developed software that can convert non-HDR content (also known as Standard Dynamic Range or SDR for short) into HDR.

Researchers at French research institute, Bcom, have created special software that essentially makes old content HDR-ready in real time for broadcasts, Ars Technica's Sebastian Anthony reports.

This process is no different from all of the classic movies that were converted into 3D a few years ago when 3D TVs were the hotness. Think of it as a "remastering" for the modern era.

According to Ars, the software intelligently analyzes each SDR video frame-by-frame and then assigns it a "lighting style" an appropriate profile that basically adjusts the picture's lightness and contrast. A filter is then applied on top of the profile to correct any discolorations.

And if Ars's first look at the converted videos are to be believed, they look good. For example, where a video would normally have a single shade of red, it has more shades after the conversion.

"The final mappings do a fine job maintaining the mood and artistic intent of the editor, director, and cinematographer—dark areas remain dark, light areas remain light (without blowing out)," says Anthony. "The HDR images 'popped,' just as you'd expect."

With that said, he was also quick to remind us that he looked at mostly demo footage, and not the newly minted HDR TV shows or movies, which could look worse if not done carefully to preserve the original "feel" of the show.

It all sounds great, but there's another bit of potentially bad news. Broadcasters need to buy a "FPGA-based device" and invest in a PC with a "beefy GPU," which would total up to several thousand British pounds, in order to run the real-time HDR converting software. Bcom's reportedly working on mainstreaming the conversion technology for regular computer CPUs and is also working on a cloud-based solution.

Plus, you still need to own an HDR TV, which means you'll have to upgrade if you haven't already done so.

As impressive as Bcom's technology sounds, we're still skeptical of its mainstream applications. Conversions just never compare to native content. If the failed converted 3D and upscaled 4K content are any indicators, converted HDR videos will never take off. We'd love to be proven wrong, but history's not on conversion's side.

researchers are using an algorithm to increase the luminance of the picture quality, therefore boosting dynamic range,

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