If HDR tone mapping is disabled and an HDR file is played on an SDR display, does it transcode the file? Or will the colors just look washed out on the TV?
Anyone?
its a rare occurrence to have a 4k tv that doesnāt do hdr, but there some out there.
I believe some of those users have said that a 4k hdr file will be converted to 4k x264 sdr, and thus have colors washed out (by act of transcoding without color mapping).
Iām not aware of any commercial HDR content that isnāt 4k, but assuming there is, I would expect the same.
the plex client reports what the device supports and can direct play.
if the content cannot direct play a particular content, then plex server will attempt to convert it to something the client can play.
even if you attempted to play an HDR file on an SDR display, for example outside of plex, I would imagine that the file colors would be NOT be correct;
- because HDR is not backwards compatible (if they had designed it with backwards compatiblity, we would not have all the color problems).
- SDR devices are not aware of the extra color values stored in the data stream, and the color values that go beyond the SDR range, are generlaly ignored or truncated, resulting in the color shift.
No, I was talking about playing a 4K HDR file on a 1080p non-SDR display. But yeah, I get what youāre saying. Thanks for the explanation.
4k files will not direct play on any non-4k capable device.
before plex added the tone mapping, most clients would have bad colors, because as explained, HDR is not backwards compatible, and is not a simple matter to covert or display on SDR.
even a 4k SDR file will be converted to play on 1080.
True, but a 4K playback device (Firestick 4K) can direct play them on a 1080p TV. The TV will just downscale to 1080p which is fine. I forgot to mention that my example involves a Firestick 4K. But the 1080p TV is non-SDR so I guess it will still transcode from HDR to SDR.
Some 4K devices can downscale 4K and or hdr, the shield is known to do so.
I donāt know about the fire devices, I never had good experience with mine and havenāt used any for several years.
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The Apple TV 4K will downscale AND tonemap for you, when connected to a 1080p SDR display.
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Iām also waiting patiently. I really donāt want to run my Plex server in docker. Hopefully they will come up for a solution for the native app for Synology and other NAS devices using Apollo Lake ectā¦
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