My experience with 4K HDR on "XBox One X" & "Win10+Plex Media Player"

[vonkobalus]

Hello.

A lot was already said on this forum regarding HDR, but there is still lots of misunderstandings and misleading information. The biggest problem as I see it is that people go and buy HDR TV or HDR projector, play HDR movies, but really don’t get HDR (even though they think they get it).

I would like to share my experience with playing 4K HDR content through “XBox One X” as well as through “Win10+Plex Media Player”. I did some extended testing especially since there is SO MUCH unknowns and misleading information regarding the support/non-support of HDR in combination with Plex.

First of all here is my setup, pretty much straight-forward:

TV Philips 65OLED873 65" OLED 4K HDR TV
XBox One X via HDMI to TV
Intel NUC with Win10+Plex Media Player via HDMI to TV
Plex Media Server on local server (dual Intel Xeon 8-core CPU, 96GB RAM)

Everything is with latest updates, latest firmware, fully up-to-date. The Intel NUC has an Intel Core i5 CPU with Intel IRIS 640 integrated GPU.

The TV fully supports 4K and HDR, when HDR signal is detected it displays a note “HDR signal” and Picture menu shows “HDR” color modes.

XBox One X fully supports 4K and HDR. It has the latest “Plex for Xbox One” app installed. The “Plex for Xbox One” app officially supports HDR.

The Intel NUC with Intel IRIS 640 integrated GPU officially support HDR, Windows 10 is up-to-date and HDR can be successfully enabled in the settings. I have latest Plex Media Player installed, however, there is NO OFFICIAL information weather Plex Media Player DOES or DOES NOT support HDR. There is not a single mention of HDR in the official announcements.

OK, now to the viewing experience. First of all, it is important to say that testing HDR is not trivial at all. This is because it is not simple to distinguish between SDR and HDR image because you really can’t easily compare side-to-side image and tell “oh, yes, HDR is working and displaying properly” or “hmm, it looks like HDR is not working properly”.

“Plex for Xbox One” experience: When playing HDR content, the TV displays the “HDR signal” note as soon as the movie is played, therefore obviously the player switches to HDR mode and HDR should be interpreted correctly. However, there are issues with performance. Even though the movie is played in direct mode (no conversion) there is significant load with the transcoder on the server … not sure why really, but movie plays smoothly. However as soon as subtitles are enabled, HDR is disabled! And also there is even more server load since Plex Server is doing more transcoding with added subtitles. Overall experience - OK without subtitles, not usefull with subtitles (which are crucial to me since I’m not native English).

“Plex Media Player” experience on Windows 10: As said before, HDR is enabled in Windows 10 and TV recognizes HDR signal. This is also true when playing movie through Plex Media Player. However, is the “Plex Media Player” really properly decoding and displaying HDR content? Well, I really can’t tell since I would need a better video sample where HDR mode would be easily to distinguish from SDR mode.

I would like you to invite to comment on my experience, and I would also have a few questions:

1. Is there any official proof (links or references please) that “Plex Media Player” on Windows 10 does or does not support HDR?

2. Where can I download a few sample 4K HDR videos with instructions how to easy and undoubtedly to distinguish HDR from SDR mode?

[5stringdeath]

@vonkobalus

Even though the movie is played in direct mode (no conversion) there is significant load with the transcoder on the server … not sure why really, but movie plays smoothly.

So … is it direct playing or transcoding? It can’t be doing both and if its transcoding you are not getting HDR

[vonkobalus]

@5stringdeath This is one is on Xbox: It’s not Direct Play, but it’s Direct Stream (original quility) for video, Audio is obviously transcoded: see screenshots below:

There is a big load on the server, see the “Plex Transcoder” process, eating up 10-12 full cores of this 16-core server, probably for the audio transcoding and video re-packaging … but as far as I can tell, this is still pure HDR, yes?

[5stringdeath]

If its just transcoding the audio and direct streaming the video, then maybe? I’m not exactly sure about this in HDR space. I would assume so, but …

[vonkobalus]

And here is the play info when playing on Windows 10 Plex Media Player:

Now, is this HDR or not (Windows says yes and Philips TV says yes)?

[5stringdeath]

@vonkobalus

Now, is this HDR or not (Windows says yes and Philips TV says yes)?

HEVC 10 Bit … I’m assuming yes! But I see what you mean, there is no real indicator if HDR is on (working) or not. However most TVs would not report it working if it wasn’t as they determine the sources being sent.

[Marvel254]

Main 10 Profile is the HEVC profile used to deliver HDR/WCG content. That the profile isn’t changed may indicate you are actually getting an HDR/WCG Signal.

Try Playing the media directly from a flash drive to the TV and determine if there is a substantial dfifference