HDR heatmaps and torch mode UHDs

[gooseygander2001]

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

Yeah technically there is no TV yet that does the whole shabang. An LG OLED I'd say you are getting the most balanced presentation with DV. Yet you are still cause of LG processing losing out on more fine detail. But I'm ok trading off some detail for better overall colour saturation and DV presentation.

Yep there is, it's called a Panasonic GZ2000 Oled.....with Dolby vision, HDR10+ and nearly 1000 nits peak brightness and the best near black performance of any TV

[Scottishguy]

Originally Posted by gooseygander2001

Yep there is, it's called a Panasonic GZ2000 Oled.....with Dolby vision, HDR10+ and nearly 1000 nits peak brightness and the best near black performance of any TV

Doesn't that have posterisation issues in high luminance areas?

[lgans316]

As an ex-owner of LG 65C8 and a current owner of Panasonic DX-902, I have to say, I prefer the DX over the OLED as it offers a more natural picture and more impactful HDR (200 nits / 880 nits full field and 750 / 1300 nits 10% window). The key aspect was the DX sustained the peak brightness for more than 2-3 minutes without any dimming, not so much on my OLED where ASBL / ABL would kick-in.

Evil Dead was painful to watch on my OLED due to ASBL and weirdly it occurred on the dark cellar scenes where I think the APL was barely 50-60 nits.

However, when it comes to consistent viewing experience, it will be challenging for any LED-LCDs to beat an self-emissive OLED.

[gooseygander2001]

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

Doesn't that have posterisation issues in high luminance areas?

This is not something I have observed but I would imagine it is perhaps more of an issue on brighter graded discs, say sony or warners of the 4000 nit variety

[Scottishguy]

Originally Posted by lgans316

As an ex-owner of LG 65C8 and a current owner of Panasonic DX-902, I have to say, I prefer the DX over the OLED as it offers a more natural picture and more impactful HDR (200 nits / 880 nits full field and 750 / 1300 nits 10% window). The key aspect was the DX sustained the peak brightness for more than 2-3 minutes without any dimming, not so much on my OLED where ASBL / ABL would kick-in.

Evil Dead was painful to watch on my OLED due to ASBL and weirdly it occurred on the dark cellar scenes where I think the APL was barely 50-60 nits.

However, when it comes to consistent viewing experience, it will be challenging for any LED-LCDs to beat an self-emissive OLED.

The Bridge on the River Kwai played havoc with ASBL algorithm on my C8. It just didn't know what was being thrown at it. But at least it can be turned off in the service menu.

[lgans316]

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

Doesn't that have posterisation issues in high luminance areas?

There is this member youngsp aka Paul @ AV forums who can answer this better. He has access to calibration tools and has been updating his findings frequently in the owners thread. He may not sound that techy to some of you guys but I think he can offer a decent insight.

[Pyoko]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Knives Out is a wonderful test of a TV's ability to display HDR in general though. Not for seeing what HDR can do at any kind of "reference" level, but as a reference (no quotes) for how your HDR's greyscale, black level, gamma, brightness etc is performing relative to the established standards.

Yeah, it's kind of nice to have a real-world reference example to test against. Because nothing except some bitdepth should have been lost in the conversion you could even plonk the UHD screenshots on a USB stick for an even closer comparison if that works on your setup. I spent some time comparing the UHD against them on my C7 and while it's definitely not 100%, getting slightly punchier gamma and bright reds that are slightly too dark in HDR for example, it's not far off and good enough for me.

I'd still prefer to watch the UHD of KO for the superior compression as the grain doesn't look quite right, in motion, on the BD to me.

"Not quite right" is an understatement, the "grain" on the BD basically consists of a layer of macroblocks with a layer of mosquito noise on top.

[gooseygander2001]

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

The Bridge on the River Kwai played havoc with ASBL algorithm on my C8. It just didn't know what was being thrown at it. But at least it can be turned off in the service menu.

All panasonic oleds have the same tone mapping from the 820 player and this helps massively with BOTRK and Crouching Tiger, and as a result those 2 titles look absolutely superb on my Panny but both were sometimes downright strange on my previous LG C6

[Scottishguy]

As for colour accuracy on my C8. Having watched film's from many different decades on UHDs. I'm pretty satisfied they are natural, and anything that isn't is source. Like some of Sonys offerings from the 90s like Hook or Groundhog day seem a bit to punchy.

Do a side by side with C8 and some Samsung. Samsungs are baked in VIVID.

[Scottishguy]

Originally Posted by gooseygander2001

All panasonic oleds have the same tone mapping from the 820 player and this helps massively with BOTRK and Crouching Tiger, and as a result those 2 titles look absolutely superb on my Panny but both were sometimes downright strange on my previous LG C6

Is that because your Panasonic TV is optimizing the MaxCLL? Cause I don't think people get the optimizer on the 820 is just for controlling the number of maximum nits it outputs. It's not a tone mapper.

[gooseygander2001]

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

Is that because your Panasonic TV is optimizing the MaxCLL? Cause I don't think people get the optimizer on the 820 is just for controlling the number of maximum nits it outputs. It's not a tone mapper.

Yep, exactly, which gives a much more balanced feel to the image, especially with shot on film movies mastered at 4000 nits. It just makes everything look as naturally grain infused as the 4k Harrison Ford Jack Ryan movies, which IMHO may be the most natural looking transfers out there.

[Scottishguy]

Originally Posted by gooseygander2001

Yep, exactly, which gives a much more balanced feel to the image, especially with shot on film movies mastered at 4000 nits. It just makes everything look as naturally grain infused as the 4k Harrison Ford Jack Ryan movies, which IMHO may be the most natural looking transfers out there.

Aye but when the film is capped at MaxCLL of 1000 nits then you don't run into that issue. Which is why it's going to be interesting to see how more of the indie labels approach HDR. As VS capped rad at 1000, with MaxFALL at 660. And (for what it is of course) it looks great, full of natural 80s colour, full of grain.

It's one title, but I think VS are doing HDR 10 with OLED in mind. If anyone can tell me what the HDR 10 metadata on Tammy was out putting, then i would be grateful.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

As for colour accuracy on my C8. Having watched film's from many different decades on UHDs. I'm pretty satisfied they are natural, and anything that isn't is source. Like some of Sonys offerings from the 90s like Hook or Groundhog day seem a bit to punchy.

Do a side by side with C8 and some Samsung. Samsungs are baked in VIVID.

Accuracy is unknowable without an objectively measured calibration to gauge the intended D65 white point, attain the proper greyscale across the luminance range, chart where the primaries and secondaries are falling etc. It may be "natural" to you but is that what it's actually supposed to look like? What decade a film was made is irrelevant, particularly once Sony aim the Light Cannon™ at it.

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

Is that because your Panasonic TV is optimizing the MaxCLL? Cause I don't think people get the optimizer on the 820 is just for controlling the number of maximum nits it outputs. It's not a tone mapper.

Yes it is. The whole point of the Optimiser is to remap the image according to Panasonic's bespoke curves for the nit level it's been set to (500/1000/1500), whereby it displays the image unaltered up to that prescribed level and then tone maps whatever lies above it according to the MaxCLL or maximum mastering display level that's read from the disc (CLL is prioritised but not all discs carry that metadata as Paramount, Fox and Disney rarely use CLL, so the max MDL is the backup). Panasonic TVs basically use the same approach.

But the player also readjusts the static metadata so that the target display itself no longer thinks that, say, a Light Cannon™ grade is what it's receiving, thus applying a gentler internal tone map and letting the Optimiser do its thing because tone mapping on top of tone mapping is not advisable. Where have you gotten "it's not a tone mapper" from?

[Scottishguy]

I accept it's based off of Pansonics tone mapping, but it's clearly not tone mapping with just optimizer on and LGs dynamic tone mapping off when we are talking about your discs that exceed 1000 nits.

As the image on my C8 with only optimizer on is flat, and significantly absent in detail.

Like, for example, I messed around with Scarface a lot. Optimizer off, video output of luminosity goes way beyond what the C8 can handle. Keep DTM on, optimizer off, black crush, highlights blown out. Keep DTM off, optimizer on less crush nit level controlled, detail greatly scrubbed, flat image that's darker. Both on detail preserved, no crush ect ect.

If I put an HDR 10 disc in with a MaxCLL of 1000 nits, you turn the optimizer off, nothing changes about the image. You drop the dynamic tone mapping, you immediately see the results.

So personally, from my real world performance, I just don't see any evidence in that tells me this thing is anything more something to output luminosity that your display can handle.

And I would go as far to call BS on Panasonic trying to say it is.

[Scottishguy]

Or let me put it this way.

UB820 detects metadata with a higher MaxCLL than what it's been told the display is capable of it's sending to > Optimizer kicks in and based on the curves of Pansonics TV tone mapping sends a revised MaxCLL output > the TV then takes responsibility for tone mapping that content from the source.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

Or let me put it this way.

UB820 detects metadata with a higher MaxCLL than what it's been told the display is capable of it's sending to > Optimizer kicks in and based on the curves of Pansonics TV tone mapping sends a revised MaxCLL output > the TV then takes responsibility for tone mapping that content from the source.

You can put it any way you like, you're still wrong.

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

I accept it's based off of Pansonics tone mapping, but it's clearly not tone mapping with just optimizer on and LGs dynamic tone mapping off when we are talking about your discs that exceed 1000 nits.

As the image on my C8 with only optimizer on is flat, and significantly absent in detail.

Like, for example, I messed around with Scarface a lot. Optimizer off, video output of luminosity goes way beyond what the C8 can handle. Keep DTM on, optimizer off, black crush, highlights blown out. Keep DTM off, optimizer on less crush nit level controlled, detail greatly scrubbed, flat image that's darker. Both on detail preserved, no crush ect ect.

If I put an HDR 10 disc in with a MaxCLL of 1000 nits, you turn the optimizer off, nothing changes about the image. You drop the dynamic tone mapping, you immediately see the results.

So personally, from my real world performance, I just don't see any evidence in that tells me this thing is anything more something to output luminosity that your display can handle.

And I would go as far to call BS on Panasonic trying to say it is.

I dare say you're the one spouting BS because you don't understand how it works, and appear to be conflating dynamic tone mapping with tone mapping in general. The Optimiser is designed to tone map what the TV can't handle according to the ceiling of where it's been set in the player's setup menu. That's what the basic (500 nits), medium to high (1000), OLED (1000, though that's rather fanciful for real world output) and Super High (1500) settings are there for.

If you have it set to Medium/High or OLED then yes, it won't actually do anything with content that does not exceed 1000 nits in the metadata (like Scarface and indeed 99.9% of Universal UHDs) because it's not supposed to. You've got the player set to map anything above 1000 nits so if you play something that maxes out at 1000 nits then the Optimiser won't touch it. But if someone else had a 500 nit display and set it to Basic (which several OLED owners in the Panasonic 820 thread have reported better results with than the OLED/1000 mode) then the Optimiser would appear to be working on practically everything as long as the MaxCLL still exceeded that 500 nit figure. And I can guaran-goddamned-tee you that you'll see the Optimiser working on any of Sony's Light Cannon™ grades when you've got it set to 1000 nits.

Again: the Optimiser is not designed to keep re-adjusting the image on a global level from the lowest point to the highest high, it's meant to take over from where the prescribed level has been set and tone map whatever lies above it, gently rolling off brightness above that level to a more linear curve than the steep increase of the regular PQ EOTF. This method ensures that the average brightness level of the content is maintained while the upper extremes of both range and colour, if available in the source, are presented as fully as possible. Think of it as a "passthrough mode" for the part of the signal that the TV can handle, and a tone map for what it cannot, which is governed by those rather arbitrary basic/medium/super high modes as mentioned.

If your TV looks terrible with Optimiser off and no DTM engaged then that underlines everything I've been saying about the 2018 LG OLEDs regarding their static tone mapping.

[Scottishguy]

So what your saying is I've been compensating for anything under 1000 by using DTM? And should just set the optimizer to a setting lower than 1000?

[Geoff D]

Best thing to do is play around with it all some more. Set it to Basic (500 nits), turn the DTM off, and see what the Optimiser does to those same discs you were trying before. But it sounds like you much prefer what the DTM is doing anyway, isn't it tied to the contrast enhancer setting on the 2018 LG or am I thinking of the previous year's models? If so then naturally it's doing what contrast enhancers do, thicken up the blacks and goose the highlights a bit more, imagery which we're conditioned to love by our silly brains.

[Scottishguy]

I have wondered that. As I've said, black crush.

[Geoff D]

HDR tone mapping: causing untold confusion since 2016