Server Version#: 1.32.2.7100
Player Version#: 8.19.1
I just picked up a new 10th Gen iPad today specifically and almost solely for watching my Plex content. My movies are 4K HDR and I was watching from a cheap Android tablet before, this upgrade was meant to allow me to direct play my content. The iPad, even with only 500 nits brightness, is more than capable of handling HEVC/HDR10 content.
But in the Plex app all HDR content looks washed out and discolored unless Convert Automatically” is enabled. All that does is enable HDR tonemapping and transcodes it to SDR. However when using the Safari web app or a 3rd party player like Infuse, the HDR content direct plays and looks great.
I’ve seen threads about this before with few replies, some say the iPad can’t actually handle HDR content, but that’s false. Does anyone know what’s going on here? The Plex app on my iPhone handles 4K HDR just fine with no transcoding. I don’t mind Infuse so this isn’t the worst thing, but I miss the Plex UI
EDIT: Just discovered enabling “Use Old Video Player” resolves this issue and the content looks as it should. Disabling this results in the issue reoccurring.
Here you go, I picked a 60 second clip from a random movie since this happens with any HDR file. I’ve also included a side by side comparison of playing with Plex vs a 3rd party player, left is Plex and right is Infuse. They look completely different-
We’ve been trying to reproduce this, but have been unable to, I’m afraid. Would you be able to reproduce the issue and then provide the iOS Logs, please?
This has been true for a very long time with PLEX and iPadOS on the 10th Gen iPad. It doesn’t seem to support HDR with PLEX unless you turn off new video player. Then it works fine. My iPad pro doesn’t have this issue. But all three of my kids 10th gen ipads do.
Did some more testing and discovered switching to the old video player just makes it transcode to SDR and look fine, at least on my end. But when I use Infuse it actually direct plays and looks proper HDR.
After seeing their handling of the HDR/audio delay issue on Apple TV I’m not too interested in going down another rabbit hole here. Just another reason not to bother with their native apps. You can provide logs if you’d like, otherwise this post can just be closed.
I don’t believe we’ve tried it on that specific device yet, but on other HDR capable iPads that we had on hand, but I’ll see about us trying on that specific device.
Infuse or VLC plays the same video just fine with direct play without any color issues but the plex app does not work. It applies to both DV and HDR10 contents.
Once I transcode down, then the colors start working so not sure why direct play is not working as expected.
The app works fine on iPad Air 4th Gen when doing direct play so the app is doing something weird to specific iPad versions.
I am also experiencing the same issue on my kids 7th and 9th gen iPads. File looks ok in 3rd party apps and if I switch to the old player (AVPlayer) but when using the new player (mpv) the colours are washed out.
Is there an update to the this issue and whether it has been replicated on an iPad from the “iPad” range lineup?
Is there anything additional we can do to help the plex team understand the issue in more detail?
Big shame PLEX could care less about this issue and the iOS app in general lately. Why don’t you try and win back some loyalty after the recent privacy debacle with some user hosted media features? It’s like nobody is steering the ship!
