Currently, one might store multiple versions of a tv show on their plex server (with dolby vision and without, for instance).
As its effectively impossible to play dolby vision (correctly) on a player that doesn’t have dolby vision support, those files should be ignored (or even if you attempt to play them, you get an error, much like if you try to play a file that requires transcoding and your server has transcoding disabled).
To generalize this, the server/player communication should be smart enough to exclude files that can’t be played back correctly (either via player capabilities or via server transcoding ) on one’s player. In this way, if one had multiple versions of a file (say DV only, HDR10, SDR), when one is playing on a dolby vision device, all will be available, but it should default to the DV file. On a non DV player/tv setup, but with HDR10 support (or with tone mapping support/transcoding enabled), one would see the HDR10 and SDR files. And on server/player setup that can only play SDR, one will only see the SDR file.
i.e. take my use case. I watch most of my plex on my Dolby Vision TV/Nvidia Shiled 2019 pro. However, I also watch on my phone on the go when I’m taking a bus somewhere or have to sit around (say at a doctor’s office). I want DV files for my TV, but want non DV files for my phone, and it should just me transparent to me which one is played (yes, I can manually choose, but its user unfriendly for it to not be automatic)
technically any file that has DV also has HDR10, so there wouldn’t be a requirement to hold 2 copies when the 1 copy contains both.
on a TV with no DV support it would simply play it with HDR10 enabled.
for your example about playing on the phone, what you want is for tone mapping to happen so that playback looks “normal”, this is something either the server or client should be doing.
you can easily test this yourself, by turning off DV on the shield and see what happens when you play a DV file, it will simply revert to HDR10.
that’s not true. Only Bluray DV content (i.e. 2 layer profile 7 I believe) has HDR10 and DV content. Profile 5 (i.e. streaming) is just in DV’s proprietary colorspace and is impossible to play (even with a shield) to a non DV TV.
i’d also note, that the play version screen doesn’t give you much info. just resolution and bit rate. So even the concept that you can select the right version is really a game of roulette, especially as many hdr10 and DV releases can be similiar bitrates.
not true.
if you turn DV off on the shield then any streaming content that is available in DV will become HDR10. there won’t be any streaming DV content that also isn’t available in HDR10.
the shield, as an example is able to tonemap the content from DV/HDR down to SDR, so there is no issue there.
whether your iOS device is capable of that, i don’t know. however it’s done at the hardware level.
the plex server does have a setting called “Enable HDR tone mapping” which should also do the job, however it depends what your plex server is running on.
I just tried this with a Profile 5 DV File. changed my display setting from 4k DV and HDR10 on the shield to just 4K HDR10. It plays the DV file in green/purple/red, as would be expected due to the proprietary colorspace. change shield display configuration back to 4k dv and hdr10 and it looks fine.
also similar effects if one just uses the enable/disable slider configuration for “dolby vision” in same display menu.
I dont think you have ever tried it.
now, maybe this is different if one is using the shield as one’s server. I am not (HDR to SDR Tone Mapping | Plex Support says it the shield can do software tonemapping, but no idea how well that works, software tone mapping generally requires beefier cpu than the shield is)
though with that said, this is interesting
seems like tone mapping for DV’s proprietary colorspace is in development.
also, the video specs for the profile 5 I tested with (as you can see, no hdr10 video)
Video
ID : 1
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : Main 10@L5.2@Main
HDR format : Dolby Vision, Version 1.0, dvhe.05.06, BL+RPU
Codec ID : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration : 59 min 14 s
Bit rate : 21.7 Mb/s
Width : 3 840 pixels
Height : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 24.000 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 (Type 0)
Bit depth : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.109
Stream size : 8.97 GiB (97%)
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Full
as opposed to this BluRay remux that I made that has HDR10 compatability
Video
ID : 1
ID in the original source medium : 4113 (0x1011)
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : Main 10@L5.1@High
HDR format : Dolby Vision, Version 1.0, dvhe.07.06, BL+EL+RPU, Blu-ray compatible / SMPTE ST 2086, HDR10 compatible
Codec ID : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration : 1 h 53 min
Bit rate : 55.1 Mb/s
Width : 3 840 pixels
Height : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 (Type 2)
Bit depth : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.277
Stream size : 43.8 GiB (91%)
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.2020
Transfer characteristics : PQ
Matrix coefficients : BT.2020 non-constant
Mastering display color primaries : Display P3
Mastering display luminance : min: 0.0001 cd/m2, max: 1000 cd/m2
Original source medium : Blu-ray
I dont play everything on my shield. my shield is connected to a DV tv, but I also play on my phone. DV profile 5 content plays fine on my shield / tv. It does not play fine (with hdr tone mapping enabled via kaby/gemini lake quick sync hdr tone mapping) on my phone which doesn’t support dolby vision.
