One of the players except plex that i still use will automatically switch to HDR when playing a HDR content. As plex recently added refresh rate switching maybe this can also be implemented in the future? I would use HDR all the time if windows and oled tvs was better at handling white pages but we are not there yet so the switching between SDR and HRD is still a thing.
Just to clarify… your monitor supports HDR but you have HDR disabled in Windows by default. You want Plex to change the system settings to enable HDR whenever it’s about to play content that’s available in HDR. Did I catch that right?
Yes that is correct, just as plex switches refresh rate it could switch to HDR for HDR content if the monitor supports it during the playback so that you could keep windows on SDR for all other content. One app that have done this for a while this is is JRiver Media Center.
That’s not how windows works.
What do you mean by that?
Well I’ll be a monkeys uncle - I never got it working in jriver before but googled based on your repose and I had a setting missing. Yep that’s pretty cool!
Preface: I am talking about “computer monitors” below. If you have connected a regular TV device to your computer, the use case may be different indeed.
If you have a HDR-capable monitor connected to a Windows computer, the idea is to enable HDR mode permanently in the Windows display settings.
You then use the slider “brightness for SDR content” to tune down the brightness for all windows and apps which are not HDR compatible.
Of course the brightness and other settings of the monitor might need adjustment for this scenario. It takes a while to dial it to a setting which works for both HDR and SDR apps.
The idea behind it is this:
if you use regular apps, they will be displayed in SDR mode with reduced peak brightness. That way you are still able to look at e.g. a spreadsheet app or word processor without burning out your eye balls.
But as soon as you start Plex for Desktop or a HDR-enabled game, these can use the full capabilities of the display.
Without the need to switch any display mode beforehand. It all works automatically.
Yes of course i know about the windows HDR settings but its far from a good experience. Problems includes latency impacts, color accuracy, white luminance difference at different window sizes, ABL, chroma 4:4:4 not available etc… So in all you will most likely want to use SDR color space on SDR content and HDR color space on HDR content unless you are just not that cared about how things looks or performs. Then you can use windows SDR to HDR conversion. On a LCD monitor you might not care but I dont think i am alone in wanting this feature.
Plex HTPC has a video setting, HDR switching. I don’t use media with HDR so never used it (I detest HDR).
I just tried the setting and the TV recognises the switch.
Yep, i whish every game would do this too, some have been able to but most still need you to flip the switch.
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Somehow that old app still trumps the “new” one in some respect, but its too clunky to navigate. I can agree that HDR has had a lot of misses along the way, windows being one of them but its also pretty great sometimes.
The old app ?
Do you mean PMP ?
Plex HTPC is way better in almost every way I can think of.
I can see the benefit of HDR for gaming but not for movies. It is actually a huge negative.
YMMV.
Yes Plex HTPC is way older than the regular app, if i remember correctly it dint even get updates for a long while when the new app was released. I guess its still based on XMBC though. You can tell since you cant use the mouse wheel when navigating and you cant use a regular window mode. Its still better i terms of performance though.
I think you got that mixed up…
Plex Media Player has been discontinued for several years now – last update goes back to 2020.
Plex HTPC was publicly released in March 2021 as a successor for one aspect of the old client (big screen HTPC use case).
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Ok did not know that, downloaded it and it looked like old plex media player/XMBC and navigated the same way, did not know it was a “new” app.
