HDR Discussion Thread

[vincentric]

Gkolb no doubt.

To go into a little more dorky detail I've early adopted the format starting with a sony 810c and hdr lite sony 850c, then moving on eventually to an oled c6 and a more capable sony hdr 930e.

Have watched and bought a crapload of movies along the way and have seen the inconsistent way the same disc can look across different tv sets; compression and banding in particular can vary wildly with the same title looking blocky and bandy on the Oled but clean on the Sony TVs. It can be a lot to keep track of.

I put Sony's UHDs up on such a high pedestal because all of their discs so far have looked clean even on the oled. I dunno how they are doing it. I mean I've seen great transfers from all of the studios and there is for sure more to it than just bits of blocking and banding but tldr; Sony is the only studio where I can say that I have not seen one weak disc from yet (Underworld is probably Son'y weakest UHD but even that still looks good overall [EDIT: forgot to say that Crouching Tiger's grain, particularly at the start, can look excessive on the C6 but is fine on the LCDs]).

Knock on wood though, their next uhd will probably look crappy after saying all that.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by vincentric

Am no military man but that there is a charlie foxtrot of the highest magnitude. I think going forward the studios should just pay Sony to do their UHD disc encodes and call it a day.

Yeah but that chart has nothing to do with discs, it's entirely on the geniuses who came up with this metadata but with no set means of mapping it so every manufacturer does their own thing (chart was stolen from a previous post by Penton BTW, it's not my own).

Sony use the best encoding tech in the hands of people who know what they're doing, to put it simply. I've been told by top men that there are some encoding suites out there that are practically 'set and forget' while others allow for more nuance and finesse, and Sony are mos def using the latter.

[vincentric]

Yeah, worded that a bit too vaguely, check above nerd post for a bit more detail.

EDIT: In short, am just impressed at how good all of sony's UHDs look so far in spite of the panel I watch them on.

[DanBa]

Originally Posted by puddy77

Hey Dan,
According to a Vizio rep on here, the 2018 Vizio P Series now internally decodes VP9/2 for HDR playback from YouTube.

Thanks puddy77!

Latest Multi-HDR TV table:
https://twitter.com/DanielBa78/statu...71178695299073

[IntelliVolume]

HDR Brethren:

I come to you with some questions I hope you can help resolve, geared towards anyone who may have some experience with Samsung UHD panels...

We finally got our UN65NU8000 up and running, and last night we watched our first Blu-ray Disc on it, Warner Bros.' Wonder Woman (running through an Oppo BDP-83 BD player and an Onkyo 605 AVR via HDMI to the new display) and the results were spectacular -- a sharp, bright, ultra-vivid, big image, especially in daylit sequences (running the set in Standard picture mode with no tweaks made to any settings save for turning off the Auto Motion algorithm to avoid the soap opera effect)...even my wife, who was skeptical about this new display "reinvigorating" our interest in the HT hobby, was BLOWN AWAY by the picture quality difference between this screen and our previous Sony SXRD RPTV. She was riveted to the screen when watching Wonder Woman last night.

However, this panel, like all displays sold today, has an overwhelming plethora of advanced settings to go through, most of which are confusing the hell out of me after coming from a basic 1080p rear projection set; I can go into each of these individually at some point on the forum here when I get around to it, so some members may be able to assist me with setting them, but my main concern is the HDR+ feature of the new Samsung we purchased based on something a memeber mentioned to me over in the LCD section of the forum when I asked about it...

It seems my panel has what's called an "HDR+ mode," which I assumed was for turning on when watching 4K/UHD sources that are encoded with HDR...from what I read on a Samsung information forum, this is actually just an "effect" that can be added like a post-processing algorithm, and that the displays themselves AUTOMATICALLY apply HDR when viewing any kind of content...does anyone know if this is true? The HDR+ function in my display allows the user to toggle ON or OFF, but when I tried toggling this ON when watching my cable box input (HDMI), it made the screen horrifically dim and dull (from what I also read, if HDR+ is turned ON, I must then go into the Dynamic Contrast menu and switch that to HIGH or something, while also switching the color temperature back to NORMAL, as HDR+ changes this to WARM I think)...

Does any of this make sense? Should HDR+ in the Advanced Settings menu of my display be ON or OFF? Keep in mind that right now, we are using a standard BD player to send a 1080p signal to the new UHD TV, which is then upscaled to its native resolution of 4K (supposedly)...would HDR+ be best on or off?

[Kris Deering]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

There's no MaxCLL/MaxFALL metadata on Fox or Disney titles but there is still max/min mastering display metadata that practically every single UHD title has, apart from Pi (which was one of Fox's earliest titles) and T2 (which is from StudioCanal, 'nuff said), and it's that maximum mastering figure that some displays map to which is totally the wrong way of going about it IMO.

As for metadata itself I think there's a bit of confusion here: its primary function is to control how the content is downconverted to a display that cannot handle 100% of the signal, the actual underlying HDR grade is first completed without any of this stuff. Once the grading is done, scene by scene - yes, even in HDR10 - then the finished grade is analysed so that the static MaxCLL/MaxFALL metadata can be generated (if used) and the same is true for generating dynamic metadata, which is first created in an automated sweep even for Dolby Vision. The colourist then looks at the downconverted version mapped to whatever nits target is being aimed for (100, 600, 1000, whatever) and tweaks the metadata accordingly.

Yeah, but the problem is that for the most part ALL of the metadata for HDR10 is useless. Let's look at it:

MaxDML - Maximum brightness of the display used to master. Means nothing about how bright or dark the movie is.

MaxCLL - Peak brightness of a single SUB pixel (as in either R, G OR B) in a movie. Because Red, green and blue have substantially different impacts on image brightness (blue gains almost nothing compared to green), it tells you NOTHING about the film's brightness. You could have a film that never has a full pixel value of over 100 nits but they decided to do the credits bright and it would throw the whole thing out of whack. It would have made more sense to have it relate to the full pixel (RGB combined) and that value would have to be the culmination of a minimum amount of pixels (so that one stray pixel doesn't rule the day).

MaxFall - Average of the movie. Probably the only thing that gives you some okay data but does nothing for peaks and valleys, which you want to preserve for HDR.

It amazes me that the powers that be decided that these metadata points would provide ANYTHING useful to the end user or the display they are using. It is like telling someone to enjoy their trip to a city and giving them a map of the country the city is in and saying close enough (it falls in there somewhere!!). But then again HDR10 was basically the most minimal HDR crumbs that Dolby would give away for free and the powers that be decided to try and work with that rather than going with DV, which would have made ALL of this a moot point and there would be no guessing, per manufacturer secret sauce, trial and error and general wild west BS.

[Kris Deering]

Another thing to keep in mind. The BDA put out to all the studios that HDR discs should be mastered to 1000 nits because they knew that displays had a LONG time before anything more than that would be even close to standard. This is why you see so many discs that are done at 1000. Sony and Warner go much higher than that and are also notorious for doing titles with MaxCLL values that exceed the Display max, which can wreak havoc with some displays. Had the BDA standardized that all titles have to be 1000 nits, we wouldn't have as many issues. But again, wild west.

[Geoff D]

Agreed on all counts.

[LordoftheRings]

Should we just go back to regular programs? ...1080p Blu-ray, and 3D HDTV?

[IntelliVolume]

Originally Posted by LordoftheRings

Should we just go back to regular programs? ...1080p Blu-ray, and 3D HDTV?

I vote for yes.

[Kris Deering]

I don't think it needs to be that extreme, though I wouldn't have scoffed at the idea of 4K with full P3 and 10 bit (4:2:2 preferably). But if they were going to go the route that they did, it would have been a lot better on the consumer to do mandatory 1000 nit grades for UHD Blu-ray. This alone would have eliminated most of the headaches people have today.

[IntelliVolume]

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

I don't think it needs to be that extreme, though I wouldn't have scoffed at the idea of 4K with full P3 and 10 bit (4:2:2 preferably). But if they were going to go the route that they did, it would have been a lot better on the consumer to do mandatory 1000 nit grades for UHD Blu-ray. This alone would have eliminated most of the headaches people have today.

Speaking of headaches...

Would you be able to address some of mine I'm experiencing with my new Samsung, Kris?

Please see the post a couple of posts above...

[LordoftheRings]

Speaking of Samsung with their Quantum Dot 4K HDR technology, there's a new competitive guy in town, Vizio with that same HDR QD technology, for less:

• https://www.slashgear.com/vizio-p-se...aled-24538766/
_____

[LordoftheRings]

Originally Posted by IntelliVolume

I vote for yes.

I was just kidding, of course. 3D is fine though, in China.

[gkolb]

Originally Posted by LordoftheRings

Speaking of Samsung with their Quantum Dot 4K HDR technology, there's a new competitive guy in town, Vizio with that same HDR QD technology, for less:

• https://www.slashgear.com/vizio-p-se...aled-24538766/
_____

Gotta wonder if a Vizio Quantum Dot = a Samsung Quantum Dot?

Not that I have a current interest or horse to pick in either race, but is it just marketing jargon, or is there a technical meaning that can be quantified and compared between the two brands?

If these TV's are cost effective and can handle the middle tier of HDR TV's, then more power to them.

What I'm most interested to knowing more about, will be the top tier TV's that will be at Robert's shootout in the fall, with some 2019 models getting their debut. 2 top Sony models and maybe a Samsung top model.

[ray0414]

Originally Posted by gkolb

Gotta wonder if a Vizio Quantum Dot = a Samsung Quantum Dot?

Not that I have a current interest or horse to pick in either race, but is it just marketing jargon, or is there a technical meaning that can be quantified and compared between the two brands?

If these TV's are cost effective and can handle the middle tier of HDR TV's, then more power to them.

What I'm most interested to knowing more about, will be the top tier TV's that will be at Robert's shootout in the fall, with some 2019 models getting their debut. 2 top Sony models and maybe a Samsung top model.

Much better value and performance over samsungs Q7 and Q8, and at a cheaper price too! Achilles heel of the Vizios was always the semi gloss screen, which IMO is ugly, but the PQ now sports a Purdy glossy screen.

[Kris Deering]

Originally Posted by IntelliVolume

Speaking of headaches...

Would you be able to address some of mine I'm experiencing with my new Samsung, Kris?

Please see the post a couple of posts above...

Sorry, no experience at all with that display.

[IntelliVolume]

Originally Posted by LordoftheRings

I was just kidding, of course. 3D is fine though, in China.

I'm actually not kidding; the plethora of settings on this new display are driving me bonkers...I don't know what is correct and what isn't. We watched Wonder Woman (2D Blu-ray) over the past couple of nights using the default Standard picture settings and it looked awesome -- but when I put in an older Blu-ray, Tales From the Hood (Scream Factory), it looked cruddy on the new TV...totally not what it looks like on our upstairs 40" LG LCD or even what it looked like on our old Sony SXRD. The picture exhibited odd, cloudy, pumping black levels and tons of grain -- something I didn't notice playing this disc on other displays.

Now, this could be because the 65" screen size is bringing out all the picture irregularities and noise, etc. of most transfers that were hidden on the smaller sizes, or it could be a setting I am not getting right in the menus of this new panel. Either way, I say 1080p Blu-ray/regular LCD, plasma and rear projection TVs were easier to deal with and set up.

[KcMsterpce]

Originally Posted by IntelliVolume

I'm actually not kidding; the plethora of settings on this new display are driving me bonkers...I don't know what is correct and what isn't. We watched Wonder Woman (2D Blu-ray) over the past couple of nights using the default Standard picture settings and it looked awesome -- but when I put in an older Blu-ray, Tales From the Hood (Scream Factory), it looked cruddy on the new TV...

There may be a lot of factors, and I don't have that TV. I will mention this, though: My OLED65C7 has three separate picture settings menus. One is a whole list of calibration options for non-HDR output. When HDR10 is used, it switches tos a separate menu for the settings in that mode. Finally, Dolby Vision has video settings when THAT is enabled, and they are kept separate from the HDR10 settings, and from the standard video settings.
So the TV is calibrated for three different output standards.

[ray0414]

Originally Posted by IntelliVolume

I'm actually not kidding; the plethora of settings on this new display are driving me bonkers...I don't know what is correct and what isn't. We watched Wonder Woman (2D Blu-ray) over the past couple of nights using the default Standard picture settings and it looked awesome -- but when I put in an older Blu-ray, Tales From the Hood (Scream Factory), it looked cruddy on the new TV...totally not what it looks like on our upstairs 40" LG LCD or even what it looked like on our old Sony SXRD. The picture exhibited odd, cloudy, pumping black levels and tons of grain -- something I didn't notice playing this disc on other displays.

Now, this could be because the 65" screen size is bringing out all the picture irregularities and noise, etc. of most transfers that were hidden on the smaller sizes, or it could be a setting I am not getting right in the menus of this new panel. Either way, I say 1080p Blu-ray/regular LCD, plasma and rear projection TVs were easier to deal with and set up.

Yes, going up in screen size exposes all the flaws and issues you never noticed before especially if you're going up 20" in screen size.